Regional Oral History Office University of California The Bancroft Library Berkeley, California University History Series James B. Kendrick, Jr. From Plant Pathologist to Vice President for Agriculture and Natural Resources University of California 1947-1986 With an Introduction by David P. Gardner An Interview Conducted by Ann Lage in 1987 Underwritten by The President's Office University of California Copyright (c 1989 by The Regents of the University of California Since 1954 the Regional Oral History Office has been interviewing leading participants in or well-placed witnesses to major events in the development of Northern California, the West, and the Nation. Oral history is a modern research technique involving an interviewee and an informed interviewer in spontaneous conversation. The taped record is transcribed, lightly edited for continuity and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewee. The resulting manuscript is typed in final form, indexed, bound with photographs and illustrative materials, and placed in The Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley and other research collections for scholarly use. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account, offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is reflective, partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ******************************** All uses of this manuscript are covered by a legal agreement between the University of California and James B. Kendrick, Jr. The manuscript is thereby made available for research purposes. All literary rights in the manuscript, including the right to publish, are reserved to The Bancroft Library of the University of California, Berkeley. No part of the manuscript may be quoted for publication without the written permission of the Director of The Bancroft Library of the University of California, Berkeley. Request for permission to quote for publication should be addressed to the Regional Oral History Office, 486 Library, University of California, Berkeley 94720, and should include identification of the specific passages to be quoted, anticipated use of the passages, and identification of the user. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: James B. Kendrick, Jr. "From Plant Path ologist to Vice President for Agriculture and Natural Resources, University of California, 1947-1986," an oral history conducted in 1987 by Ann Lage , the Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, 1989. Copy no. JAMES B. KENDRICK, JR. 1986 TABLE OF CONTENTS — James B. Kendrick. Jr. PREFACE i INTRODUCTION by David Pierpont Gardner iv INTERVIEW HISTORY v EARLY INFLUENCES: FAMILY. COMMUNITY. AND EDUCATION 1 Parents from Farm Families in South Carolina and Iowa 1 Father's Early Career in Plant Pathology 3 The Move to Davis, the "University Farm," 1927 4 Town and Gown Relationships in Davis 7 Religion and Politics in the Kendrick Family 9 Schooling: Academics, Athletics, and Evelyn 11 Entering UC Berkeley, 1938: Bowles Hall Resident 16 Undergraduate Education from Top Faculty Members 19 Going to Mecca: Choosing Wisconsin for Graduate Studies in Plant Pathology 24 II GRADUATE SCHOOL AT THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN AND WARTIME SERVICE, 1942-1947 28 Brother's Parallel Path in Plant Pathology 28 Glenn Pound, Fellow Graduate Student 30 The Lasting Influence of J. C. Walker and other Wisconsin Professors 32 Trademarks of Wisconsin's Training in Plant Pathology 38 A Brief Navy Career 40 Army Training and Assignments: a Waiting Game 42 Completing the Ph.D.: Research on Bacterial Canker of Tomato 47 Appointment at the Citrus Experiment Station, Riverside 50 III CITRUS EXPERIMENT STATION, RIVERSIDE 53 Work of an Agricultural Researcher 53 Agricultural Constituency in Southern California 58 Investigating Vegetable Diseases 60 Establishment of Air Pollution Research Laboratory 62 Sabbatical Year at Cambridge and Rothamsted 66 Promoting Riverside Faculty Unity and Camaraderie 72 IV TRAINING GROUND FOR A UNIVERSITY ADMINISTRATOR: RIVERSIDE CAMPUS GOVERNANCE 79 Establishment of the Undergraduate Liberal Arts College 79 The New Academics: Relations with Agricultural Researchers and the Riverside Community 82 Faculty Organization into an Academic Senate 84 Development of a Graduate Program 87 Directing the Design for a Physical Master Plan, 1959 90 Chairman of the Department of Plant Pathology. 1963 Academic Senate Work: Educational Policy, Personnel, Planning 94 Statewide Senate Involvement The Academic Council Organization of the Statewide Agricultural Unit V PLANT PATHOLOGY DURING YEARS OF CHANGE AT RIVERSIDE 106 A Collection of Specialties 106 Adding Specialists to the Department's Faculty Trend toward Over-Specialization; Need for Redefinition of the Field Graduate Teaching Program Initiated, 1962 113 VI THE KENDRICKS' COMMUNITY ACTIVITIES IN RIVERSIDE 118 Active in Presbyterian Church Town and Gown Tensions: Explaining the University to the Community 121 Free Speech Days at Riverside 124 Membership in Community Organizations Evelyn's School Board Service An Unexpected Job Offer from President Hitch 129 VII THE FINAL YEARS AT RIVERSIDE 135 Representing the University-wide Faculty during Years of Turbulence 135 Producing an Academic Plan for Riverside 137 Value of Shared Governance 139 The College of Natural and Agricultural Sciences: Pros and Cons for Agricultural Research 140 Administrative Organization of College and Experiment Station 142 Teaching Responsibilities and the Decline of Mission- Oriented Research 146 VIII VICE PRESIDENT FOR AGRICULTURAL SCIENCES—EARLY CONCERNS 147 President Hitch's Call for a Long-Range Academic Plan 147 Operating a Centralized Unit within the Decentralized University System 148 Reports of Academic and Advisory Group Committees on the Division's Direction 149 Pressure from Farming Community. Legislature, Regents: the Division in a Defensive Position 153 Broadening Representation on the Agricultural Advisory Council 157 IX PUBLIC SCRUTINY AND LEGAL CHALLENGES TO AGRICULTURAL PROGRAMS 159 Agricultural Mechanization and Farm Labor Opportunities: The Vasconcellos Hearings, 1973 159 Budget and Personnel Problems in Nutrition Education 162 The University's Development of the Tomato Harvester 166 Regents' Meetings on Mechanization and Labor Displacement, 1978 170 Legal Action Challenging the University's Agricultural Program, 1979 174 U.S. Department of Agriculture's Response to the Lawsuit 176 The University's Response and Current Status of the Suit 178 Academic Freedom and the Independence of the Regents 182 X THE RESEARCH BUDGET FOR THE AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION 184 The Fixed Costs of Permanent Academic Staff Salaries 184 Legislative Protection for Agricultural Research in the 1967 Reagan Budget 186 The Field Station System, Tulelake to Imperial Valley: Another Fixed Cost 189 The Statewide Critical Applied Research [SCAR] Fund 193 Working with the State Department of Finance 196 XI THE AGRICULTURAL DIVISION AND GOVERNORS REAGAN, BROWN AND DEUKMEJIAN 198 Relationship with the Reagan Administration 198 Reagan Advisors Earl Coke and Allan Grant 198 Interpreting the University1 s Mission to the Staff and Community 199 Protection for Philosophical Differences in the Faculty Promotion Process 200 Supportive Oversight during Reagan' s Governorship 203 Confrontational Regents' Meetings, with Campus Administrators on the Defensive 204 The Jerry Brown-David Saxon Era 207 Warfare Between the Governor and the Regents 207 Brown and the Budget 210 Extension's Budget Cuts Restored by the Legislature 212 The Budget as a Political Document 214 Brown's Major Agricultural Appointments: Tim Wallace, Rose Bird, Rich Rominger 216 The Deukmej ian-Gardner Years: Restoring the University's Stature and Its Budget 220 XII SPECIAL RESEARCH UNITS WITHIN THE AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION 226 Giannini Foundation for Research in Agricultural Economics 226 The Original Grant and Organization 226 Restructuring to Meet the Practical Needs of Commercial Agriculture 229 Agricultural Issues Center 233 The Idea and the Funding 233 Choosing a Diverse Advisory Board 239 Making the West a Force in Agricultural Policy 243 Developing Support for Agriculture in an Urban Society 244 Kearney Foundation for Soil Science 246 Genesis and Direction 246 Flexible Response to the Kesterson Crisis 2A9 Slosson Fund for Ornamental Horticulture 251 Mosquito Research Program: Broadening Decision-Making for a Cooperative Effort 252 San Joaquin Valley Agricultural Research and Extension Center 256 A UC Program for the San Joaquin Valley 256 Administrative Changes 259 The Future of Cooperative Extension: Regional Centers? 261 Integrated Pest Management Program 263 A New Concept of Disease and Insect Control 263 Developing Budgetary Support in the Jerry Brown Administration 265 Wildland Resources Center 268 Sustainable Agriculture Program 270 Serving Small-Scale and Organic Farmers 270 Legislative and Public Input to the Program 272 XIII ADMINISTRATIVE ADJUSTMENTS TO UNIFY THE DIVISION 275 A Historical Overview 275 The Link to the U.S. Department of Agriculture 278 Improving Budgetary Control over "The Provinces" 280 The Day Committee: Coordinated Planning for Allocation of Resources 282 Resistance to Reallocating Positions between Campuses or Departments 28A Centrifugal Forces on Cooperative Extension Planning Process 285 Combining the Directorship of the Agricultural Experiment Station with the Vice Presidency. 1973 287 Assuming the Directorship of Cooperative Extension, 1975 290 Explaining the Division to Farm Bureau Members 291 XIV PERSONNEL PROBLEMS IN COOPERATIVE EXTENSION 293 New Problems. New Clientele, New Personnel 293 Inadequate Funding, Staff Reductions, and Charges of Discrimination 295 The Cooperative Extension Assembly for Career Employees 296 Strong Committee and Kleingartner Evaluations of Accusations against Extension 298 Another Administrative Reorganization: Lowell Lewis and Jerry Siebert as Directors 300 No Conspiracy to Discriminate but Some Unclear Policies and Procedures 302 Continued Tension between an Integrated Program and Separatist Tendencies 305 The Value of Long-Range Academic Planning in the Division 310 XV THE DIVISION'S RESPONSE TO CULTURAL CONFLICTS AND CHARGES OF DISCRIMINATION 313 Cultural Conflicts between Traditional Extension Staff and New Clientele and Staff 313 Affirmative Action Workshops to Sensitize Staff 316 Failings of the Strong Committee Report 316 Commitment to Excellence and the Work Ethic 317 Role of the Regents and the President 319 The Affirmative Action Program in Extension and Its Positive Accomplishments 320 The Division's Exchange Program with Southern University in Louisiana 324 Surviving in Troubled Times 329 XVI ADMINISTERING PROGRAMS OUTSIDE THE DIVISION OF AGRICULTURE: WATER RESOURCES AND UNIVERSITY SERVICES 332 The Water Resources Center and Its Archive 332 Broadening the Disciplinary and Geographic Bases 334 Chairing the Interdisciplinary Coordinating Board 335 Working with an External Advisory Committee 337 The Printing Plant and the University Relations Office 340 Regents' Security Officer, 1976 to 1984 342 UC Retirement System Board: Defining the Board's Role 343 Issues Debated by the Board 345 UCRS Changes under President Gardner 347 XVII OTHER NATURAL RESOURCES PROGRAMS AND CONCERNS 350 Changes in Administrative Responsibilities and Title, 1952-1983 350 College of Natural Resources: Attempting to Establish a Special Emphasis for the Berkeley Campus 353 The Natural Reserve System 360 Defining Goals, Building Campus Support through an Academic Planning Process 360 Publicizing the "Best-Kept Secret" in the University 364 The Faculty Advisory Committee 367 Harold Walt, David Gardner, and State Funds for Wildland Research 368 XVIII NATIONAL LEADERSHIP ACTIVITIES IN AGRICULTURE 372 Agricultural Research Policy Advisory Committee 372 The National Association of State Universities and Land Grant Colleges' Division of Agriculture 374 Creating the Council of Administrative Heads of Agriculture (CAHA) 375 CAHA' s Leadership in Budget Development for the Division 376 Foreign Agricultural Programs 379 XIX SUMMING UP 382 Retirement Events 382 Outlook for the Future 383 TAPE GUIDE 386 INDEX 388 University History Series List 393 Biography 400 Memorial Address by David Gardner 404 PREFACE When President Robert Gordon Sproul proposed that the Regents of the University of California establish a Regional Oral History Office, he vas eager to have the office document both the University's history and its impact on the state. The Regents established the office in 1954, "to tape record the memoirs of persons who have contributed significantly to the history of California and the West," thus embracing President Sproul 's vision and expanding its scope. Administratively, the new program at Berkeley was placed within the library, but the budget line was direct to the Office of the President. An Academic Senate committee served as executive. In the more than three decades that followed, the program has grown in scope and personnel, and has taken its place as a division of The Bancroft Library, the University's manuscript and rare books Library. The essential purpose of the office, however, remains as it was in the beginning: to document the movers and shakers of California and the West, and to give special attention to those who have strong and often continuing links to the University of California. The Regional Oral History Office at Berkeley is the oldest such entity within the University system, and the University History series is the Regional Oral History Office's longest established series of memoirs. That series documents the institutional history of the University. It captures the flavor of incidents, events, personalities, and details that formal records cannot reach. It traces the contributions of graduates and faculty members, officers and staff in the statewide arena, and reveals the ways the University and the community have learned to deal with each other over time. The University History series provides background in two areas. First is the external setting, the ways the University stimulates, serves, and responds to the community through research, publication, and the education of generalists and specialists. The other is the internal history that binds together University participants from a variety of eras and specialties, and reminds them of interests in common. For faculty, staff, and alumni, the University History memoirs serve as reminders of the work of predecessors, and foster a sense of responsibility toward those who will join the University in years to come. For those who are interviewed, the memoirs present a chance to express perceptions about the University and its role, and to offer one's own legacy of memories to the University itself. The University History series over the years has enjoyed financial support from a variety of sources. These include alumni groups and individuals, members of particular industries and those involved in specific subject fields, campus departments, administrative units and special groups, as well as grants and private gifts. Some examples follow. ii Professor Walton Bean, with the aid of Verne A. Stadtman, Centennial Editor, conducted a number of significant oral history memoirs in cooperation with the University's Centennial History Project (1968). More recently, the Women's Faculty Club supported a series on the club and its members in order to preserve insights into the role of women in the faculty, in research areas, and in administrative fields. Guided by Richard Erickson, the Alumni Association has supported a variety of interviews, including those with Ida Sproul, wife of the President; athletic coaches Clint Evans and Brutus Hamilton; and alumnus Jean Carter Witter. The California Wine Industry Series reached to the University campus by featuring Professors Maynard A. Amerine and William V. Cruess, among others. Regent Elinor Heller was interviewed in the series on California Women Political Leaders, with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities; her oral history included an extensive discussion of her years with the University through interviews funded by her family's gift to the University. On campus, the Friends of the East Asiatic Library and the UC Berkeley Foundation supported the memoir of Elizabeth Huff, the Library's founder; the Water Resources Center provided for the interviews of Professors Percy H. McGaughey, Sidney T. Harding, and Wilfred Langelier. Their own academic units and friends joined to contribute for such memoirists as Dean Ewald T. Grether, Business Administration; Professor Garff Wilson, Public Ceremonies; Regents' Secretary Marjorie Woolman; and Dean Morrough P. O'Brien, Engineering, As the class gift on their 50th Anniversary, the Class of 1931 endowed an oral history series titled "The University of California, Source of Community Leaders." These interviews will reflect President Sproul 's vision by encompassing leadership both state- and nationwide, as well as in special fields, and will include memoirists from the University's alumni, faculty members, and administrators. The first oral histories focused on President Sproul himself. Interviews with 34 key individuals dealt with his career from student years in the early 1900s through his term as the University's llth President, from 1930 to 1958. • More recently, University President David Pierpont Gardner has shown his interest in and support for oral histories, as a result of his own views and in harmony with President Sproul 's original intent. The University History memoirs continue to document the life of the University and to link its community more closely — Regents, alumni, faculty, staff members, and students. Through these oral history interviews, the University keeps its own history alive, along with the flavor of irreplaceable personal memories, experiences, and perceptions. A full list of completed memoirs and those in process in the series is included in this volume. ill The Regional Oral History Office is under the administrative supervision of Professor James D. Hart, the Director of The Bancroft Library. Willa K. Baum Division Head Regional Oral History Office Harriet Nathan Project Head University History Series 9 November 1987 Regional Oral History Office Room 486 The Bancroft Library University of California Berkeley, California iv INTRODUCTION Compelling* colorful, and abundant in success stories, the history of the University's involvement in agriculture from the days of Eugene Hilgard to the present is well worth the telling — and the reading. The special- even unique — value of this oral history is that it represents a firsthand account of a fascinating chapter in the evolution of the University's role in the development of California agriculture during a time of change and adaptation, told by someone who was not simply a spectator of those events but an active and engaged participant. I first met Jim Kendrick in 1971, when I joined the Office of the President in Berkeley as the vice president responsible for the Extended University, University Extension, and an array of public service programs. Among my fellow vice presidents was a friendly and outgoing gentleman whom I instantly and instinctively liked. That, of course, was Jim Kendrick, whose informal manner and common touch hid a deep acumen about people and a formidable knowledge of California agriculture, from Davis to San Diego, from Del Norte County to the Mexican border. My own early experience working for the California Farm Bureau had educated me in the dynamics of California agriculture, and gave me an even deeper admiration than I would otherwise have had for the breadth and scope of Jim's understanding of agriculture's role — in the University and in the state — and his grasp of its great potential and its equally great challenges. Here you will find, distilled in his own characteristic style, the rich experiences of a lifetime's involvement with a great university and with California's most important economic activity. Few people could match his experience and his knowledge; no one could tell it as vividly or as well; and few have served the University of California with such unstinting devotion, effect, and skill as has Jim Kendrick. I commend this oral history to you. David Pierpont Gardner President, University of California January, 1989 INTERVIEW HISTORY This oral history memoir with James B. Kendrick, Jr., records a lifetime involvement with the University of California. It includes observations from a close association with three campuses of the University and nearly two decades as a leader in the University's statewide administration. Kendrick's youth was spent in Davis, California, where his father, James Kendrick, Sr., was a prominent plant pathologist and eventually head of the Department of Plant Pathology. After graduation from high school, he attended the University of California's Berkeley campus, where his major in general curriculum brought him in contact with a group of inspiring professors and helped him define his interest in following his father's career path. After a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin and wartime service, Kendrick returned to the University of California as a junior plant pathologist at the Citrus Experiment Station in Riverside in 1947. For the next twenty-one years, his own path from agricultural researcher to head of the Department of Plant Pathology, with increasing involvement in university governance, paralleled the growth to prominence of the Riverside campus. Kendrick's interview provides valuable observations on the establishment of the College of Letters and Science and eventual expansion to a full UC campus, with the concomitant tensions between town and gown and between the agricultural station and the general campus. He describes his and others' efforts to promote faculty camaraderie and good relations with the community. He also demonstrates how his faculty committee work in academic and physical planning, educational policy, and personnel evaluation prepared him for his appointment as vice president for the statewide Division of Agricultural Sciences in 1968. The major part of the oral history is devoted to the nearly two decades of leadership of the University's "tenth campus" — what is now called the Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources. The division is a complex collection of diverse units, in every part of California. Because authority or funding for most of these units is shared with individual campuses, with local counties, and with the federal government, the vice-president at the systemwide level places his program in effect only through persuasiveness, patience, and good-humored persistance. In developing the division's program, Kendrick was obliged to listen to a multiplicity of interest groups, including representatives of the diverse elements of the agricultural community that the University serves; the legislative and executive branches of the state government; federal mandates for federally funded programs; and the farm labor and minority communities, who were not the traditional constituency of the division's programs and who expressed their concerns through protests and lawsuits rather than the customary program advisory committees. vl Kendrick's discussion of how he attempted to move the division in the direction of serving a broader constituency and meeting new societal concerns begins with an explanation of the fixed nature of the program and the personnel in his two major units: the Agricultural Experiment Station and the Cooperative Extension Service. He then demonstrates how he managed to introduce flexibility into the programs and to bring sometimes entrenched personnel into line with new division demands. His survey of ongoing projects and new directions gives the reader an overview of these two units and insights into the difficulty of rapid changes within a complex University setting. Two other particularly instructive sections of the oral history consider, first, the relationship of the division with the legislature and with the three gubernatorial administrations in office during Kendrick's tenure; and second, the personnel problems and charges of discrimination in the Cooperative Extension Service and Kendrick's attempts to reach solutions in an tense atmosphere. Kendrick's philosophy in meeting these challenges is expressed in this passage from his oral history: "I figure if you're going to learn to walk, take one step at a time. Pretty soon you'll be running. But if you don't start walking, that just delays the end of the race." Kendrick's patience, persistance, and good-humored determination have been displayed throughout his career. He has also displayed them in fighting and living with cancer for the past several years. During the course of these interviews for his oral history and during the lengthy and demanding editing process, his health was variable, but he continued to focus his energies to produce a thorough and thoughtful history of his career and of the University's Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources. The twelve interview sessions took place from September 2. 1987, to November 13, 1987, in Mr. Kendrick's home in Berkeley. He reviewed the transcipt with care, sometimes rewording passages for greater clarity and conciseness. The memoir was funded by the President's Office of the University of California. Tapes of the interviews are available in The Bancroft Library. Ann Lage Interviewer/Editor January 31, 1989 Berkeley, California Dr. James B. Kendrick, retired UC official, dies at 68 T7w BERKELEY - Dr. James B. Kendrick Jr., formerly vice presi dent for Agriculture and Natural Resources at the University of Cali fornia at Berkeley, died Wednesday of cancer. He was 68. Dr. Kendrick retired in June 1986 after nearly 40 years with the university. He took a bachelor of arts degree in botany-genetics from DC-Berke ley in 1942, and following two years of military service he took his doc toral degree in plant pathology from the University of Wisconsin in 1947. He joined the staff at UC Riv erside in 1947 as a plant pathologist at the Citrus Experiment Station, and became a professor of plant pathology and chairman of the Plant Pathology Department. He was in 1968 appointed to the new job of vice president for agricultur al sciences which became vice president of Agricultural and Natu ral Resources, at UC-Berkeley. He was responsible for coordi nation of UC's statewide programs in agricultural research and educa tion, for the Natural Reserve sys tem and Cooperative Extension and 4-H, and he served 16 years on the State Board of Food and Agri culture. Dr. Kendrick was a member of the executive committee of the Na tional Association of State Univer sities and Land-Grant Colleges, a representative to the Western Re gional Council of the Joint Council of Food and Agricultural Sciences, and until recently chairman of the Scientific Review Panel on Toxic Air Contaminants, a nine-member stat* board. He was a member of the First Congregational Church of Berke ley, and a director of Guide Dogs for the Blind in San Rafael. Dr. Kendrick is survived by his wife, Evelyn, of Berkeley; his mother, Violet, of Davis; a brother, E.L. Kendrick, of Tucson, Ariz; a sister, Elizabeth Gale, of Wood land; a son, Douglas Kendrick, of Berkeley; a daughter, Janet Ken drick, of Davis, and two grandchil dren, Amber and Shane. A memorial service will held Wednesday at 2 p.m. in the First Congregational Church at 2345 Channing Way. The family asks that no flowers be sent, but that donations be made to the Alta Bates-Herrick Hospice in Berkeley, or to Guide Dogs for the Blind in San Rafael. Obituary The Tribune, Oakland, California February 16, 1989 Mr. Kendrick died on February 15, 1989, as his oral history was being readied for binding. The address by President Gardner at his memorial service on February 22 has been included in the appendix. I EARLY INFLUENCES: FAMILY. COMMUNITY, AND EDUCATION Parents from Farm Families. South Carolina and Iowa [Date of Interview: September 2, 1987] ## Lage: This is Ann Lage interviewing James B. Kendrick, Jr. Do you still use the "junior"? Kendrick: Yes, I do. Let me explain the reason for using junior. My father and I were in the same profession and employed by the same institution at different locations. I felt that in order to be identified and prevent confusion, I would preserve the use of junior as part of my name. So I've done it all these years, even though he was deceased in 1962. Lage: That makes sense. You were writing papers in the same field. Kendrick: Yes. Lage: That's something we'll get into — how you followed in your father's footsteps. Today we're going to start with personal background, especially focusing on how it might have influenced your later career — policies, decisions, and points of view. Let's start with your family, your parents. Kendrick: Well, my parents had their origin in two rather different locations. My father goes back to South Carolina. He was born in a rural setting, in a farm setting, in York County near Clover, South Carolina, which was very close to the border between South Carolina and North Carolina. The largest major town where they used to go shopping for major things was Gastonia, North Carolina. ## This symbol indicates that a tape or segment of a tape has begun or ended. For a guide to the tapes, see page 386. Lage: He was raised on the farm? Kendrick: He was raised on a farm. His father died early, and so he was raised by an uncle, back in the family home. His mother went back to the family home. I have a lot of fond memories of visiting that southern rural society, in terms of how they eeked out a living on not a very affluent piece of ground. Lage: About how large was the farm? Kendrick: I don't remember, but it was several hundred acres, and the usual kind of cropping of corn and cotton. But my recollections of that farm are childhood recollections. I don't have a lot of lasting impressions, except those that you get as a seven, eight, or ten-year-old because when we moved to California our visiting back in that setting of South Carolina was very infrequent. My father was born in 1893, and he ultimately went to Qemson University. I think there was some delay between getting out of high school and enrolling in CLemson, but he graduated from CLemson about 1916. Lage: And Clemson is in North Carolina? Kendrick: Qemson is in South Carolina. It is the state's land grant institution. At the time it was a military men's school. It should not be confused with the University of South Carolina, but it is a state institution. Probably known more today because of its football team than anything else. After graduating from Clemson, he went to Iowa State. I think one of the professors whom he was attracted to, or at least had some courses from at Clemson, was a botanist who arranged to get him up to Iowa State University for some graduate training. I think that was about 1917 or 1918. While up there, he went into the service because of his military training. That was in World War I, but he never served outside this country. The war ended soon after he was taken into service as a second lieutenant. At any rate, he moved to Iowa — Ames — and enrolled in Iowa State in a graduate program of applied botany, which led into plant pathology and an interest in plant diseases. I think sone of his early graduate assistantships involved summer work eradicating the barberry, which is an alternate host for wheat rust. That was a major program in those days to control wheat rust in that big wheat belt of the Midwest. Wheat rust is an interesting fungus that requires a different host to complete its life cycle, and one of the early techniques of control was to interrupt that life cycle by destroying its alternate host. So Kendrick: the government employed a lot of young men — I think probably principally young men at that time — to scour the countrysides and hoe and cut out the barberries. Lage: So it was a natural means of control. Kendrick: It was an early biological control system with the emphasis on biology. Dad's major professor at Iowa State was I. E. Melhus, who was kind of a crusty individual, as I remember. His secretary was my mother [Violet McDonald]. Lage: Oh I We're getting into the courtship. Kendrick: She was born in Iowa. Her parents were also farmers. She was born in Washington County, which I think, as far as I recall, is down in the southeastern part of the state. But I never knew that part of her background. By the time I knew my grandparents, they were resident in the town of Ames. Some time earlier they had moved from Washington County and were farming property on the edge of the Iowa State campus. The university had purchased their farm and farm house in the course of needing, I guess, additional land to expand. So by the time I was really acquainted with them, they had located themselves as residents of Ames, with an address that's vividly fixed in my mind as 926 Grand Avenue. We spent a good deal of time with my mother's parents — more so than we did with my father's. Father's Early Career in Plant Pathology Kendrick: They were married in 1919, and then my father was offered a position at Purdue University. Lage: Had he finished his — ? Kendrick: He had not finished his doctoral program, but I think he had a master's degree by that time. And so he took the position that was offered to him at Lafayette, Indiana, at Purdue University. It was in Lafayette where I appeared, when I was born on the 21st of October, 1920. The period of my early life in West Lafayette, where we lived, I can recall only in snatches, principally by reflecting on conversations with my parents about those days and looking at early photographs. My father was, as with most first-born children, recording every moment that he could and so there are many early photographs of me. Kendrick: Most of those early photographs were not taken with a hand-held camera like I've got where the focus, shutter speed, and exposure are all automatically set. The photographic sessions were regular excursions. We would get into a small wagon or walk over to the laboratory where Dad worked. He'd set up the still camera and set everything in motion. It was like a photographic studio. So. it was not just a snapshot. But there were some snapshots, too. taken on those early Kodak cameras. I was the only sibling of the family until 1926. when my sister was born, also in Lafayette. Lage: Were there other siblings after that? Kendrick: I have a brother who was born in Woodland after we moved to California. During the period that they were in Indiana, Dad sought to complete the work for his doctorate degree. So he took a leave, I think, about 1924 or '25, and we went to Ames for a year. That's why I have more vivid recollections about Ames than some of the other places in my early life. He completed his work and received his Ph.D. degree about 1925, I think. Lage: In plant pathology? Kendrick: In plant pathology, from Iowa State University. He minored in bacteriology. Then we returned to Lafayette. He had an associate whom he was working with at Purdue. His name was Max W. Gardner. They did a lot of their research work together, but I don't think they did much classroom instruction. Dad didn't hold a professorship, because his appointment involved mostly full-time research. He was primarily handling the vegetable problems. I can't really be certain about these impressions at Purdue because I was less than seven years old. Lage: That's all right. We don't expect you to remember — Kendrick: You don't form a lot of lasting memories at that age. The Move to Davis, the "University Farm", 1927 Kendrick: In 1927, I remember. Dad had an opportunity, or an offer, to come to California and locate at Davis to develop a plant pathology group on the Davis campus. Up to that time, the department was here at Berkeley in the College of Agriculture. They tried to Kendrick: provide the needs for plant pathology on the Davis campus by locating one or two people up there from time to time to teach, primarily. Ralph E. Smith was chairman of the department at that time, and also a significant figure in the development of plant pathology in the University of California. Incidentally, Ralph Smith was the administrator who really got the Citrus Experiment Station started back in the early 1900s. Dean [E. J.] Wickson sent Ralph E. Smith to southern California to establish a laboratory to take care of lemon rot and a walnut blight problem. So Ralph E. Smith, the plant pathologist, was the one who got agricultural research laboratories going in southern California, but that digresses. Lage : He saw the need to develop something more active on the Davis campus, it seems. Kendrick: Well, he and others, I assume. But it was determined that the University wanted a group, an extension of the Department of Plant Pathology at Berkeley, on the Davis campus as it was developing. And so my father was the one who accepted the invitation to do that. He remained as the head and chair of that unit throughout his entire career at the University of California — thirty-three years, which is something you don't do nowadays. Lage: That's right. Longevity that you no longer see very often. Kendrick: Well, there were a lot of changes that took place over the years. So they packed up bag and baggage in 1927 and by late summer of that year, we had moved to Davis to start a new life. I'm sure at the time it felt like they were moving to the end of the earth. Lage: That's what I'm thinking, even though that pattern of movement from Iowa to Calif ornia wasn1 1 uncommon. Kendrick: Well, that's true, but it was a long way from South Carolina. My mother's parents were Ohioans, so they had moved from Ohio to Nebraska and then back to Iowa. I think they were prospecting around trying to find a piece of ground that was productive enough that they could farm and survive. When we first arrived in Davis we lived for several months in a few rooms in a little hotel — the University Hotel on 2nd and "B" Streets. Later that year we moved across the street to a small house that's still there. And then a couple years later to a little larger house on "S" Street. In 1930 they built a home at 35 College Park, a housing development outside of the city limits, where the University faculty and staff were locating. Lage : How comfortable could a college professor be at that time or. the salary of a professor? I Kendrick: Well, it was pretty meager. Lage: In comparison to others in Davis and surrounding areas? Kendrick: Well, in comparison with others. I never detected that we were skimping and saving and sacrificing. We never had anything tc waste, and the humble origins of their parents instilled a frugality in their attitude that watched the spending pattern pretty closely. There was a lot of canning of fresh fruit. Both of them having a farm background where they canned and preserved and stored food to last the year, that was kind of a way of life for my mother; she did a lot of preserving and canning. Dad was an avid gardener; he always had things growing. My folks bought their first automobile while we were there. I noted that he bought a Buick; it wasn't a new Buick. but they bought a Buick. they didn't buy a Model-T Ford. A 1927 Buick was really quite a car. So I think that they were living in a style that the rest of the academic appointees were. But it was a very happy time, I think, because it was a period of growth of the campus. There were only five hundred students, and about four hundred and fifty were in a two-year program called the non-degree program that the University at a later date [1960] gave to Cal Poly arv.' r^l--1.. "You take this program because it is not compatible with our long- range goal." That created a lot of discussion on the campus because the people who were associated with teaching the two-year program really felt they were being disadvantaged and disparaged. But the view prevailed that because the University of California was a degree-granting institution it really shouldn't continue the vocational aspect of teaching which characterized the non- degree program. The Davis campus was known as the University Farm. It wasn't the "University of California, Davis" at that time. Lage: It didn't have the separate status, as I understand. Kendrick: No, it certainly didn't. It was tied very, very closely to Berkeley. You couldn't wiggle without getting permission from people at Berkeley. And that close tie has a lot to do with what I have observed over the years as the "Davis attitude," relative to Berkeley or relative to the rest of the University. Lage: Should we elaborate on that, or will that come out — ? Kendrick: Well, I think that will come out later because until I became the vice-president I really didn't detect the characteristics of the campuses. Each one is as different and has as much individual character as children. But there are some lasting kinds of impressions of the Berkeley-Davis relationship, I think, that account for a lot of reactions which people have difficulty explaining; but if you understand the background and you have been around long enough you can understand them. Lage: So, whereas maybe you didn't detect it when you were living in Davis, I'm sure when you were faced with it, you understood it. Kendrick: That's right. You could make allowances for it and not get your nose out of joint. Lage: Your father must have experienced it directly, with his position. Kendrick: Yes, he did. And he's the origin of a lot of my knowledge and impressions. Town and Gown Relationships in Davis Kendrick: The campus, in those late twenties and early thirties, developed to a large extent as a family. The leaders of the various academic units — most of whom have buildings named for them now — were friends and colleagues of my family, and there was a lot of esprit de corps and camaraderie. The faculty liked to play together as well as work together. I can recall spirited Softball games; they would divide themselves into teams and leagues and spend the summer playing softball. When that ran out, they'd play volleyball with teams and a league schedule. The socializing among the faculty was fairly extensive. One of the principal indoor sports was card playing — bridge. But the town of Davis was really dominated by the University. Other than the presence of the University, Davis's main reason for existing was that it was the railroad junction between the Southern Pacific's main line that went east to Chicago and the coast line that went north to Seattle. Lage: Nothing else there. Kendrick: A little supplying of the farm community there, but not extensive. They had a little downtown section. But if you had taken the University farm and its activities away from Davis, it would have just been a railroad stop, with a small supply and trading center for farmers. 8 Lage : Were your connections mainly with other university-related people as you grew up, rather than with farmers and their children? Kendrick: Almost exclusively, because most of my schoolmates whom I can recall were children of other people employed by the University. However, I had a close chum through grade school who was the adopted son of the owner of the principal dry goods and grocery store in town. Lage: That was the town and gown relationship? Kendrick: That was the town and gown relation. [laughter] I used to think it was really something special being able to go downtown on Sunday when the store was closed and be given store candy or other goodies by his mom or grandfather, who would be working there. It was sort of a back-stage type of experience. Anyway, my primary group of colleagues came from the campus community, although I have to modify that statement a bit because another close chum who had a lot of influence on my life as a colleague was the grandson of a farmer near Winters. They were a bright family; the youngsters were very sharp. There were two boys and a girl in that family, but Gordon Furth was the oldest one and my chum. Gordon joined our class, I think, in about the third grade. I was in the second grade when I started school in Davis. Class sizes averaged thirty-five students. Gordon's grandfather and father were farming apricots and walnuts. Even though they were in the Winters school district, they weren't happy with the Winters school at that time, so the parents gained permission to send their children to Davis. That move resulted in a very long- lasting and endearing friendship because the group of kids I played with most liked to go to the Furth's ranch from time tc time and play in that rural setting. But Gordon was a lead horse in the sense that he seemed to have no problem getting good grades. The competitive spirit in our group was strong because we wanted to get better grades than he did. [laughter] So in that relationship, friendly as it was, it was always trying to outdo Furth; we couldn't understand why he was so much scarter than the rest of us. Lage: There was a value placed on academic achievement, then. Kendrick: We had a pretty straightforward academic program. But I think the value system was preserved because so many of the youngsters were children of University people. There were about a dozen of us who really watched one another and how well we were doing. Kendrick: This is kind of a sideline, but back in the third grade — it could have been the fourth grade — I discovered that Gordon was reading Time magazine from covei to cover, and I can recall thinking, "Why on earth at an age of about nine or ten, in the fourth grade, was he reading that magazine from cover to cover?" It wasn't until years later I discovered that his uncle was the managing editor of Time magazine. [laughter] Lage: So he wasn't a typical farmboy. Kendrick: I don't know what you mean by typical farmboy, but Gordon was certainly far above average in intelligence. Lage: Now, what did he go on to do? Kendrick: After Gordon graduated from high school at Davis he went to Berkeley. He became a certified public accountant and gained an M.B.A. He has had a marvelously successful career in managing shipping and mining companies. One of his successful responsibilities was with Cypress Mining Company. H Kendrick: Let's skip ahead a little bit. Gordon was the person I selected as the best man at our wedding, so it has been a long and enduring relationship. He has a famous brother, too. Alan Furth, who was about two years younger than the two of us, was general counsel for the Southern Pacific Company and one of the chief executives of that operation. So it was a family of successes. Lage: I suppose having a Davis campus there had quite an effect on them, too; without it, they may not have achieved — Kendrick: Well, I'm not sure the Davis campus had that much influence; certainly they had enough native intelligence to succeed no matter where they were going. The interesting thing was that the parents saw that they were receiving less challenging instruction in Winters than they would have in Davis. The fact that they were thrown in amongst youngsters who were from University background parents, I suppose, had some stimulating effect. Religion and Politics in the Kendrick Family Lage: Are there other things about the Davis setting or the family values? We're interested in religion, politics, that kind of thing. Does that have a bearing on your course? 10 Kendrick: Well, neither one had any real twig-bending influences on my points of view about one thing or another. I think I did the usual; I went to Sunday school regularly and then youth fellowship — it was called Christian Endeavor in those days. When I got a little older and into the teenage years, Christian Endeavor met Sundays evenings, so it provided another opportunity for a night out with my teenage friends. The sponsors gave soce great parties [chuckles] so we had a lot of fun. It was a small, social, Protestant experience. Only a few of my classmates were Catholics. The only difference noted was that my Catholic classmates wouldn't eat meat on Fridays, and they would sacrifice something they ordinarily ate or did during Lent. Aside from that, the religious influences were not dominant, and they certainly were not a source of discrimination. Lage: Was politics a discussed subject? Here we are recalling the Depression years as you were growing up. Kendrick: Yes. During the Depression years was one of the times I recall the University faculty took a salary cut. And that was kir.d of a tense time. It ultimately got restored, but I don't think anybody ever caught up. I recall overhearing conversations on how my parents were really going to have to tighten up. So it was a time of real belt tightening. Of course, my folks built their home in College Park — a four-bedroom, two-bathroom home in a choice piece of real estate — for about $6,000. They bought the property, which amounts to two lots, for five hundred dollars. This was in 1930. My mother still lives in the house she and Dad built on that property. The percentage appreciation that has taken place over this period is almost obscene. Similar homes and property in College Park are now selling for several hundred thousand dollars, presumably because of the choice location. The appreciation in most cases is in excess of 3000 percent. Lage: Was the New Deal accepted by your family? Kendrick: I don't ever recall hearing a lot of discussion. There could have been conflict in my family because my mother had a conservative Republican background and my father had a Democratic background. Mother never seemed to be very assertive in terms of her politics. She also came from a strict Methodist family where Sunday was a quiet church-dominated day. There were no cards in my grandparents' home. My father was a smoker, and so was one of my mother's brothers. The use of tobacco was also regarded as a sin by my maternal grandmother. I remember times when my father and uncle would go down to the basement to smoke. I don't know why they thought that was avoiding the obvious because the smoke would come ou through the house. 1 guess they felt they could 11 Kendrick: get out of "smell-shot" in the basement. At least it had a coal- like smell because there was lots of coal stored in the basement, which was used to heat the house. Although my father was a Democrat, I can't recall whether he thought Roosevelt was a real savior or not. His work ethic, I think, was such that he was not terribly sympathetic with some of the welfare society programs. But I think he generally was a supporter of Roosevelt because the country needed a change. There was never really a lot of political discussion in our home. Lage: One of those things best not discussed at some point. Kendrick: I think part of it was my mother's attitude. She just didn't care to engage in that kind of a discussion. So their political background really didn't have any impact. As a matter of fact, my father's politics didn't influence me because I've been a registered Republican all my life. I think the reason I registered Republican is that by the time I got ready to vote, the Republican candidates appealed to me more than the Democratic candidates, so I became a Republican. And you couldn't really determine from my voting record through the years exactly what party I affiliated with. Lage: So you were more independent, even though you registered Republican? Kendrick: I registered Republican just to have a party, but I — Lage: Just to be contrary in Berkeley, I suspect. [laughs] Kendrick: Yes, I feel disenfranchised in Berkeley. Being a Republican is probably a useless registration in Berkeley. But my leanings tend to be a little more conservative than liberal, although I think that it's really a pick-and-choose attitude. No party label really satisfies me. It depends on the issue whether I'm a conservative or a liberal. I can't buy all the liberal causes, and I can't buy all the conservative causes. Schooling: Academics, Athletics, and Evelyn Lage: Kendrick You talked a little bit about schooling- there any early interest in academics? -not in depth — but was In elementary school in Davis, I recall that I was just a little better than average as a student. I worked like a demon to try and match Gordon, but I was never able to do so. There were a couple of smart girls in my class also, and I couldn't catch up 12 Kendrick: with them either. They were daughters of University faculty fathers. Probably no more than half of the class members were from University families, and it was a good, competitive class. Ultimately, thirty-eight of us graduated from high school. For those interested in numerology, it is interesting to observe that the thirty-eight members in the class graduated in the year of 1938, fifty years ago next year, which seems like a long, long time ago. I recall that my parents were strict about my paying attention to grades, and if I slipped down and got a C or a D in a subject, we visited the teacher to find out why. Those were not particularly pleasant occasions, and I was subject to corporal punishment at home. My mother didn't spank; my father believed that a good tanning would straighten out the thinking, fairly easily. So I had my share of spankings. Lage: This kind of academic achievement was definitely encouraged at home. Kendrick: It certainly was. No excuse for not doing your best, which, I would say, left a lasting impression. I came to believe early ir. school that if it was worth the time, it was worth giving your best to do it. I guess I developed a perfectionist attitude. Life really began to open up for me in junior high school — seventh and eighth grade. My seventh and eighth grade classes were in the high school building. We were kind of like a second thumb on the hand, but at least we were in the environment of the high school. We had a very good physical education instructor who was also the high school athletic coach — coach of everything. His name is Dewey Halden, and he is still living. Dewey would spend his time in the gymnasium on the weekends. He made it available to all youngsters in Davis who otherwise might be running around and getting into trouble. Dewey organized basketball games with other schools so from about the seventh grade on the world of athletics became more important than anything else, as far as I was concerned. His encouragement of this early athletic development was not all altruism. He liked to win. [laughter] And his high school football and basketball teams usually won their conference titles. Lage: But he just was working on the junior high level? Kendrick: He was working with these kids — seventh and eighth graders — getting them started in a competitive, organized sporting event, largely basketball, but also a little touch football. The senior minister of our community church was a big, tall fellow, who had a more than passing interest in basketball. His name was the Reverend Williams, and Pewey asked him to help coach a team of 13 Ken d rick : Lage: Ken d rick: Lage: Ken d rick: junior high school youngsters. I was part of that group. That was my earliest exposure to competitive athletics, and I thought life was really going to be fun and games. So the seventh and eighth grade passed in due course without any lasting impression except these years opened up a new world other than one which was strictly academic. Even though Davis High School then had a relatively small student body and served a district outside of the city limits, it offered a wide range of extracurricular activities. The school also took great pride in the fact that it graduated a significant number of youngsters who went on to college and who were automatically accepted into the University of California. Since it had a reputation to maintain, it conducted a rigorous academic program, too. And did the athletics continue in high school? They sure did. Did you play basketball? I felt during most of my high school career that the most important part of the day began about two o'clock — after I finished with my formal classes. I played football and basketball, and since we didn't have a baseball team that amounted to anything, because Dewey Halden didn't seem to be interested in baseball, we had track and field. It was on the track field where I developed some degree of individual skill, but we'll get to that in a moment. I really enjoyed playing football. I played football from the time that I was a freshman until I graduated, and managed to get through without doing any more damage to myself than breaking a front tooth, I played in the back field all of the time, and our teams were quite good. We won our league championship most of the time, although we couldn't advance very much further than that because the bigger schools just beat up on us. But we were kings in our own league. I played regularly in the back field on the team from my sophomore year on. Basketball was fun, and I enjoyed it also. It was easier to match comparable skills because our teams were divided into A, B, and C groups, depending on the athletes' age, height, and weight. In track I seemed to be a reasonably springy runner, so I high- jumped and hurdled. My junior year was the best year of my track achievement. I had developed a capacity to run the high hurdles better than most people in northern California, so I won most of the races that year. I can recall coming home from the first invitational meet, in my junior year, on a Saturday afternoon. "My father said, "Well, how did you do?" And I said, "I won two races." "Well, I'll be damned," he said. [laughter] Kendrick: I think both of us were surprised that I had any kind of ability to do that because I was not physically constructed to run the high hurdles very well. In spite of being shorter than most hurdlers, I had developed a technique to get over them rapidly without much waste motion. Dad and mother were avid followers of my high school athletic program. They seldom missed a football or a basketball game or a track meet in which I participated. It was my junior year when I won the northern California high hurdle championship, which qualified me to go to the California state meet. This was quite an honor because Davis had not qualified more than one or two people for the state meet ever before. Dewey Halden and I traveled to Long Beach for the meet, and it was a thrill of my young life to go down there with my coach. I found out that I was going to be racing with some of the same people I had been beating all year. However, I was to experience one of life's most humbling lessons. I stumbled on the first hurdle in the opening heat and didn't qualify for the final race. It was a bitter disappointment that I had to endure because the young man who I had been beating in every race all year came in second in the finals. Lage: So you felt you could have been first — Kendrick: Well, not first. The winner was clearly much better and more outstanding than anybody else. But I figured that I would have a cinch second. That was an important event in my life, because I had to deal with defeat caused by subpar performance rather than losing because of being outclassed. Lage: This was in '37? Kendrick: In 1937. The athletic program was good, but that was not all of the extracurricular offerings. Davis High had a whole range of activities; we had a drama program, an orchestra, a chorus, student government, and a publications group, which published a monthly student paper and the annual. Lage: How large would the school have been? Kendrick: We had about 150 students. Four classes — four grades — and about 150 students. Lage: That's small. Kendrick: What it meant was that each of us did everything. When football season ended, we put away the football uniforms and then we became basketball players; and when basketball season ended, we put those uniforms away and became the track squad. In addition, we squeezed in the extra time for ;lrama, chorus, orchestra, student council, student government, and publications. I 15 Kendrick: participated in all of these, so I had a high school that was busy from morning until night. It was a rich, enjoyable experience and a lot of fun. Lage: And the academics kept up? Kendrick: Well, surprisingly, the academics improved. I got through high school with a pretty good record — not the best in the class, that belonged to Gordon Furth, but it was pretty good. All of the C's and D's disappeared, and the A's and B's came back because I studied. Good grades didn't come all that easy for me. To compensate I would devote my weekends to studying my course work a week ahead so that I would have the freedom of the evenings and the afternoons to pursue the athletics and other activities. I worked during spare times and in the summers by watering people's lawns or taking care of their animals when they were on vacation to accumulate some spending money. My main source of recreational funds was gained by working at the University during summers. Dad always provided the basic necessities of food and clothing for the children. So all I needed was spending money. I have not yet mentioned that the most positive influence in my life occurred in high school; Evelyn joined my class in 1934. Her maiden name was Evelyn Henle. Lage: So Evelyn goes way back, too. Kendrick: She goes way back, too. She came from a farming family that farmed dryland grain between Winters and Davis, a little closer to Davis than Winters, so she automatically qualified for the Davis Unified School District. Her father's name was Albert Ludwig Henle, and her mother's name was Lura Wicks Henle. Her first eight years of school were spent in a one-room, fully integrated, multiple-classed school that was named the Fairf ield School. The only teacher in this school was the wife of Dewey Halden, my high school athletic coach. [laughter] Davis had a population of about one thousand when we moved there in 1927, so it should not have been surprising to find many close relationships among people with whom we came in contact in that community. Lage: It was an interesting community, though, with a population of one thousand; but with the presence of a university, it must not have been the typical small town. Kendrick: You are right, it gave it a special character. During most of my high school period, Evelyn was merely a classmate. It was about the end of our senior year when we began to see one another with a little more serious intent than just dating for a party. I liked many of the girls and wasn't about to be serious about any 16 Kendrick: particular one for a while. By the time that we had graduated I stopped dating other girls, and we had a steady relationship from then on. The spring of 1938 — the year we graduated from high school — her father had a farm accident. A disc rolled back on his leg, and it had to be amputated. That event disrupted her plans to go on to college; she had to go to work and provide some remuneration for herself as well as for her family. She went to work in the Bank of Davis as a teller/ clerk. So, during the period that I was an undergraduate student at Berkeley, she was working in Davis at the Bank of Davis. Lage : Had she intended to go on to Berkeley, also? Kendrick: I don't know. She probably had intended to go on to school in Davis where her older sister, Lura Alleyne, had gone. I can't recall any particular occasion when we reached a decision to marry each other, but we sort of knew it would work into that relationship eventually. We were married about a week after I graduated from Berkeley, on May 17, 1942, in a lovely ceremony held in the yard of her family home on the farm. Guess who was my best man? Gordon Furth was again an important part of my life. However, this time I came out ahead of him. Gordon had also been a student at Berkeley. Entering UC Berkeley. 1938; Bowles Hall Resident Lage: Kendrick: Let's turn now to your experience at Berkeley. choose Berkeley? Why did you Well, my choice for Berkeley really was made on the basis of looking briefly at three schools: one was Davis, and there was Stanford and Berkeley. I w as attracted to Stanford but realized it was pretty impractical because of the expense. I was not offered any scholarships, so it looked like a little too much of a financial obligation for my parents. Berkeley was the choice because I didn't want to go to Davis. I felt that the close friendships that existed between faculty members and my high school notoriety was not going to allow me to stand on my own feet, so I chose Berkeley. I also recognized the fact that it was regarded as an achievement to get into Berkeley. I had managed to pass the Subject A examination, which was a surprise to some people, including me, but nevertheless gratefully accepted. If 17 Ker.drick: The other thing that made coming to Berkeley attractive was my acceptance as a resident of Bowles Hall as a freshman. There were only a few freshmen admitted to Bowles at that time. The policy in those days was different than it is today because once you were admitted, you stayed as long as you were enrolled as an undergraduate if you wanted to. Bowles was a living arrangement that had no rival, in my judgment. Lage: Did you know about it in advance? Kendrick: Yes, I did, because Rose Gilmore was the resident manager. Her husband w as a professor on the Davis campus. I think that fact helped a bit in being selected, because there was lots of competition for acceptance. It was almost like applying for a scholarship. It was necessary to secure recommendations from reliable people. That first year my roommate was Gene Ireland. There was a bit of irony in this situation because Gene went to school in Winters. I knew him slightly in high school because we opposed one another in our athletic contests. At Berkeley, I enrolled in the premed major, as did Gene, so we started down the same academic path in Bowles Hall as roommates. Bowles was constructed so each resident had a private bedroom with a larger room between the two private bedrooms which was used as a common living room. So, two of us had three rooms. All of the rooms on the front of the building had fabulous views of the Bay Area and San Francisco. As freshmen, however, we had back rooms, and we had to wait for our seniority to grow before we could progress to the view-rooms. Lage: The living arrangements were luxurious compared to today's standards. Kendrick: Lage : Kendrick: You could never find that kind of living accommodations from University housing today. The other thing that made it attractive was the food service. All the meals were prepared in the hall's own kitchen, and they were fabulous, good as well as generous. The hall was relatively new then, wasn't it? built in the thirties. I thought it was I think it was relatively new. shape than it is today. It was certainly in much better Professor [James D.] Hart donated money to build a library as a memorial to his parents while I was there. He also stocked it with a basic collection of representative literature. It was a magnificent addition to the living quarters. Another remembrance of Bowles was the quality of the student residents, who later became quite well known and successful. At the time, 18 Kendrick: however, they were just ordinary classmates, or at least that was the way it seemed to me. I knew very little about most of their backgrounds, although I knew there were a lot of San Franciscans in various classes. My Bowles classmates included Peter Kaas, Eugene Kilgore, Bill Coblentz, Dan Koshland, Dick Goldman, Stan McCaffrey, and Jim Schwabacher, to name only a very few who became prominent in later life. Lage: What was the line between Bowles people and fraternity people? Kendrick: There was no line. We were part of the "non-org's" — organized non-org's. We engaged in a fair amount of campus politics. We had some campus politicians among us, but none, following Stan McCaffrey, during my years at Bowles succeeded in being elected to the presidency [of the Associated Students]. We ran candidates for the student council and various other elective offices. Our candidates tended to affiliate with the fraternities' candidates. We would canvas the frats and try to make alliances so that we were treated a bit like a fraternity. However, we were never really accepted as a fraternity. For ore thing, there were 108 of us; we were larger than all of the frats. Secondly, the Bowles students did not participate 1 . selecting the members of the hall. I visited fraternities and had friends in a few houses, but I was never seriously tempted to move from Bowles. No physical living situation could match that of Bowles Hall, and the companionship at Bowles seemed as good as the alternatives. The environment at Bowles also encouraged good scholarship, to which by that time I was committed. Another thing that changed my attitude about fraternity life was my interest in Evelyn. I wasn't really looking for opportunities for a heavy social life. The social program at Bowles Hall was active enough for most of us. Evelyn would come to Berkeley for the appropriate events, so I always had a date when I wanted one. Lage: How did you choose the premed program? Kendrick: I really don't know. I think the attractiveness of practicing medicine seemed glamorous to me. I realized also that it was a respected and rewarding profession, both monetarily and self- satisfying. I think I saw it as a means of establishing a successful relationship with members of a small community. So medicine seemed to be where I wanted to dedicate my life. Eugene Ireland, my first roommate, became a pediatrician. He established his practice in Santa Monica. I had four different roommates during my residency in Bowles. One of them was another premed named Jack Dykes, now deceased, who was a thoracic surgeon who practiced in Bakersf ield. He went to medical school at Northwestern University. I roomed with him during our sophomore year. Then I roomed one year with Bob Crum, 19 Kendrick: one of my Davis High School classmates, who came from a farm family near Winters. My senior year I roomed with another farm boy named Latane Sale, pronounced "Latnee." He was from a farm near Red Bluff. Undergraduate Education from Top Faculty Members Kendrick: I stuck with the premed program for two years. Premeds generally took the same courses, and class sections tended to group students depending on where they ranked in the class. I found myself generally grouped with the top-ranked students. I seemed to have caught the fire of academic stick-to-itiveness by that time, so I spent a lot of time studying very diligently; the grades responded correspondingly. My undergraduate education was really quite good. For a general science background, the premed program couldn't have been better suited. I was in the College of Letters and Science, which gave me an opportunity to pursue a bachelor of arts degree. It also gave me a chance to take history and English and a number of electives. My undergraduate instructors were all well known members of Berkeley's faculty in later years, just the way it ought to be nowadays, but it isn't. I had chemistry 1A-B from Professor [Joel] Hildebrand and organic chemistry from Professor [C. W.] Porter, quantitative analysis from Professor [Wendell M.] Latimer and English was from Professor James D. Hart, now with The Bancroft Library. He was just starting out on his faculty career. He is the Professor Hart who gave the memorial library to Bowles Hall while I was a resident there. My zoology 1A instructor was Professor [Sol] Light, and then in spring of that year there was a brand new assistant professor by the name of Richard Eakin, who taught my zoology IB. I took plant physiology from Professor A. R. Davis, and history of western civilization from Professor Herbert Bolton. Lage : You had quite a background. Kendrick: In zoology I took a course from the famous geneticist Professor [Richard] Goldschmidt, and in botany I had a good course in genetics from Professor [T. Harper] Goodspeed. By the beginning of my junior year I was becoming disillusioned — not with medicine, but with my student colleagues who were headed into medicine. Even in those days, it was a cut-throat operation. I said if these are the kinds of people who are going into medicine, I'm not so sure that I want to continue in medicine. I was really disillusioned about what you had to do to get the grades to get into med school. 20 Lage: Highly competitive. Kendrick: Yes. And I didn't feel that it ought to be that way. Lage: Even though you, yourself, were getting good grades. Kendrick: Oh, I was getting adequate grades, I think they would have been considered as acceptable. I just didn't like what I saw. At about this same period of disillusionment with the pretned "crowd," my father said to me one day, "I think that any well educated person should have at least a minimal knowledge of botany — plants." And I said to myself, "Well, he's supporting me in school, the least I can do is take one or two courses that he thinks are important." I think I showed a certain amount of maturity and wisdom. [laughter] So I took a botany course in my j unior year. Lage: Who was the professor then? Kendrick: I don't remember who gave that beginning botany course. I can remember plant physiology being taught by Professor A. R. Davis, and it may have been that Davis was the first teacher I had for botany. There was a laboratory that went with it, and even though it wasn't a piece of cake, it was no problem. The grades came easily. And then I became attracted to genetics, so I started taking all the genetics courses I could find. Lage: Was this plant genetics, or just — ? Kendrick: Just any genetics. There weren't all that many courses offered in those years, anyway. Lage: Genetics must have been a very different thing from what it is now. Kendrick: Oh, indeed it was. Then it was mating plants and figuring out the characteristics of inheritance, studying the phases of cell division, and observing the actions of chromosomes. It was still a young science, so it didn't have a lot of background information relative to other fields of botany. The genetics department was in the College of Agriculture, and it was there I came in contact with Professor [Ernest E.] Babcock, Professor [Roy] Clausen. Dr. [Everett] Dempster, and another beginning assistant professor, G. Ledyard Stebbins, who later moved to Davis. His specialty was the study of evolution of plants. There are a lot of interesting stories about him. He was just as eccentric as an assistant professor as he continued to be all the rest of his career. He was fun. We never really knew where we were in his course because he never gave us an examination until the final. [laughter] So he was a mystery. 21 Kendrick: I took all the genetics courses that were offered by that department. It was a field that really interested me. Now. when I decided as a junior that I was not going to go on to premed, I began looking around at majors which would allow me to graduate in the four years that I had thought I was going to devote to my undergraduate career. I was also getting fairly serious about wanting to get married at the end of this period, and I really didn't see my pursuit of medicine as offering a lot of opportunity to be married while attending med school. That also had a certain amount of influence on my decision to change majors. I discovered, with the help of Professor Adriance Foster, who was a botanist and my advisor, that there was a major called general curriculum, which seemed to fit what I needed. General curriculum was a major which required thirty-six upper division units spread among three subjects with a limit of no more than twenty units in any one subject. I had taken or planned to take a number of courses in botany, zoology and genetics, in following my interest in genetics, so I spread my general curriculum program among those three subjects. In later years it was always a little difficult to explain when I was asked what my major was. When I replied, "general curriculum," the reply generally was, "Well, what's that?" [laughter] We'll get into another interesting episode as we get into my military career, which is related to my undergraduate major. But it fit what I needed to a tee, so I filled out my undergraduate years with courses in botany, zoology, and genetics, having already satisfied the English and history requirements for the Letters and Science general education requirement, I devoted the rest of my undergraduate years to getting a good education. During this time I also took some entomology and mycology, in anticipation of my graduate school program. Lage: Were many of these subjects in the College of Agriculture? Kendrick: The mycology and the genetics courses were. I also was stimulated into good performance by the fact that a few courses I took were heavily dominated by graduate students. Let's digress a little bit. In the late thirties, graduate students began to enroll at Davis in plant pathology and my father, characteristic of his relationship with his faculty and staff, treated them like family. In those early days, plant pathology at Davis had only one or two graduate students, and they were incorporated into the department as part of the family. One of those early graduate students was Jack Oswald, who came to Davis from De Pauw University in Indiana. Jack didn't work directly with my father, but he had a close relationship with him because Dad was the grand patron of that department. Jack was a very smart and talented young man who had had an illustrious 22 Kendrick: career as an undergraduate. He was a member of Phi Beta Kappa, selected to the academic Ail-American football team, full of fun and very naive. So he was the brunt of a lot of practical jokes. In those days you could not get all of the courses you needed for the Ph.D. degree majors at Davis; you had to enroll at Berkeley to take some courses. One of the years that Jack was in Berkeley was my junior year. Because I had not yet completed Botany 1A. which was a prerequisite for all courses in botany except one course, I wound up that year taking Botany 1A and a plant biochemistry course offered by Professor [Dennis R.] Hoagland, whose lab instructor was Dr. [William Z.] Hassid — another famous name in the annals of plant physiology and plant biochemistry. Jack Oswald and Bob [Robert N.] Colwell. who was ultimately a UC Berkeley professor in the School of Forestry, were in that plant biochemistry course. I worked closely with Jack Oswald in later years, so let me elaborate on his career for a minute. Jack Oswald finished his degree program at the University of California about 1942; he got his Ph.D. and immediately enlisted in the navy. He became an officer in the navy, ultimately assigned to the PT boats. In the later years of his service career he was commander of a squadron of PT boats and had a pretty harrowing experience in the war. He came back after the war and joined the faculty of the plant pathology department at Davis. After Max Gardner's retirement, my father became the chairman of the department when the chair moved to Davis. Nobody exchanged positions, but the chairmanship did. My father asked Jack Oswald if he would move to Berkeley and become the assistant chair for the Berkeley campus, which he did; and he then began to exert a certain amount of independence, somewhat to the consternation of my father. But therein lies this Berkeley-Davis relationship that we will get into later. Jack, being a self-starter and a participant, became noticed by the dean and then by the Chancellor's Office. He subsequently was asked to assist dark Kerr as one of the assistant chancell ors. Then when Clark became the president of the University, Jack moved with Clark as a special assistant to the president and handled the Regents' meetings' agenda, etc. Jack then moved from the University of California to the University of Kentucky as president, where he served for about eight or ten years. He got a little tired of Kentucky politics and rejoined the University of California with President Charles Hitch, who appointed me as the vice-president of Agricultural Sciences, as it was known at the time, and Jack Oswald as his executive vice-president. Jack was in that position for only about a year or year and a half and then went to Penn State University as its president, where he served a good fifteen years. He retired as president a couple of years ago. He has been a recognized success in academic leadership in university circles. Jack has been a close colleague and family friend throughout our respective careers. 23 Ker.drick: Now, back to college. I was able, through a little influence by my father and Dr. Max Gardner, to take that plant biochemistry course, which I really had no business taking at that point, but I needed a botany course and that was the only one available to me which didn't have a botany prerequisite. So I found myself with about twenty graduate students. I think I was the only undergraduate in the course, and I worked like a beaver. Professor Hoagland used to come in at twelve o'clock. It was a one-to-two o'clock lecture and a two-to-five o'clock lab, two or three times a week. Hoagland used to come to the classroom and begin to cover the blackboards with data, tables, and figures, and during his lecture he would refer to them. It soon occurred to both Jack Oswald and me that if we wanted to make any sense out of our lecture notes, we had to get to the class about the same time as Professor Hoagland and start copying all of the information as he was writing it on the blackboards. Well, I worked hard, survived, and got an A out of the course; so it was a worthwhile experience. But it was another one of the challenges to stay up with my colleagues, and I never really was comfortable coming in second. Lage: [laughs] I can see this competitive streak in you coming out. Kendrick: I really liked to be up front. My undergraduate education at Berkeley was first class, offered by giants in their field. They will remain lasting impressions on me as well as, apparently, lasting impressions on their colleagues because they were all honored and identified as significant figures. I felt that my four years in that program in the College of Letters and Science was really a gift. Another thing I liked about my undergraduate years was the old Berkeley semester schedule which Berkeley has returned to. I liked that schedule because if your finals fell right in the fall semester, there were six weeks beween semesters which were available for work. One year I swept the library at the Davis campus. I had all kinds of odd jobs during my undergraduate years which provided me with enough cash for my social schedule needs during the spring. Lage: It does make sense. I guess other people think so, too, since the campus has returned to that schedule. Kendrick: It's easier to organize a course of instruction in the longer term than the shorter quarter term. I participated in the conversion from the semester to the quarter system at Riverside and saw many courses abused when their instructors modified the schedule of presentation rather than changing the course to fit the quarter term schedule. 24 Kendrick: The one big surprise of my last undergraduate year occurred when I returned to Bowles Hall one spring afternoon and found a notice in my mailbox informing me that I had been elected to Phi Beta Kappa. I hadn't the foggiest notion that I had qualified or whether I was even being considered for membership. But it was & thrill. It made all the hard work, study, and competitiveness worth it. Going to Mecca: Plant Pathology Choosing Wisconsin for Graduate Studies in Kendrick: I went to Wisconsin the fall of 1942. I had earlier determined that Wisconsin was where I wanted to go to school and that was largely through the influence of my father, who knew where the outstanding departments of plant pathology were. Lage: We haven't really talked about how you decided on plant pathology. Kendrick: No, we haven't. It was not really a very sudden decision on my part because I had had a fair amount of exposure to the subject in my Davis school years when I would go to the field with my father and see the kinds of things that he was doing. Then while wondering what I might do with the major in general curriculum, I figured that Dad's life had been pretty rewarding and satisfactory, and since I was interested in genetics and plant breeding and diseases, I thought I might as well pursue plant pathology too. Lage: What about the decision to go on to graduate school? Kendrick: There was never a doubt. Lage: Never a doubt? You had been thinking about it with medicine, of course. Kendrick: No, there was never a question about stopping with a bachelor's program. I seemed destined to go as far as the academic offerings were available, whether it was in medicine or a Ph.D. program. I had determined that what I really wanted to do was affiliate with a university, once I had made the decision not to go into medicine. You're not going to do that with only a bachelor's degree; you are going to do it with an advanced degree. 25 Kendrick: There is another event that had a major influence on my career. I mentioned that my father went to Purdue to work with Max Gardner, and they became collaborators and colleagues. Bad was looking ahead in the early 1930s to when Ralph Smith would retire from the University as chairman of the plant pathology department, which included Davis at the time. I know Dad was instrumental in getting Max to move to Berkeley in 1932 in the Department of Plant Pathology, where they resumed their collaborative relationship. When Professor Smith retired in 1936, Dad supported Max Gardner as the logical candidate for that chairmanship. I guess he was able to get Max's name into consideration because the man who ultimately made all the decisions in those days, Dean Claude B. Hutchison, made the appointment in 1936. Max Gardner held that chairmanship until he retired in 1954. Lage: Well, my dad and Max continued this very close personal friendship and relationship the rest of their lives. I didn't have a godfather, but if there had been anybody who was my godfather. Max Gardner would have been the one. He often told of "hand-holding" my father during the night of my birth, so that goes back a long way. Margaret Gardner, Max's widow, still lives in their home here on Hawthorne Terrace. She is hard of hearing and cannot see well, but she is a spry ninety- two-year- old person who is a marvel. They raised two children, and they both became physicians. Murray H. Gardner is at Davis now in the department of medicine and veterinary medicine working on AIDS of rhesus monkeys. Mary Frances is in San Antonio, I think. She and her husband, also a physician, raised a family, most of whom became doctors too. But the close relationship that my father and Max maintained all their life — there is a picture of the two of them right there [indicating a photograph] in front of Hilgard — was one that I felt very warm about. Whenever Dad would come to Berkeley for his business I would make arrangements to get down and visit with him briefly in Max's office. So plant pathology sort of wrapped itself around me by osmosis as much as any calculated decision to pursue it as a profession. But your interest definitely lay there, in related fields, at least. Kendrick: Well, I felt comfortable working with plants. I spent my summers assisting the plant breeders in the agronomy and pomology departments at Davis and that gave me a boost in genetics, too. I liked seeing what would happen when you made crosses and then analyzed the progeny data. This gave me an early statistical exposure. We had to analyze the data to see if we were dealing with something real or imagined. So, almost from the time I entered high school I was familiar with plant experiments. It 26 Kendrick : may have been different if my father had been an animal scientist — I may have gone on in animal science; but it was plants that I was interested in and felt a certain degree of confidence dealing with. Max Gardner and my father were quite familiar with the graduate program in plant pathology of Wisconsin and thought highly of it. In plant pathology there was Cornell and Minnesota or Wisconsin, and after those three, well, the rest of then were in a different rank order. Lage: What about UC? Kendrick: Not at that time. It was not that eminent. Cornell, Wisconsin, and Minnesota had three giants that stood out as patriarchs in the field. At Wisconsin it was L. R. Jones, at Minnesota it was E. C. Stakeman, and at Cornell it was H. H. Whetzel. L. R. Jones had a number of students who went or. to become pioneers in plant pathology in various departments in the U.S. One thing Wisconsin did well was place their students all over the U.S. and these graduates would send their good students to Wisconsin; for these students was sort of like going to Mecca. Minnesota graduates did the same thing for Minnesota, and Cornell graduates were equally loyal to Cornell. But L. R. Jones was the patriarch of four eminent people in their own right: James Dickson, George Keitt, J. C. Walker, and Joyce Riker. These four men split their plant pathology interests by commodities. Keitt was a fruit tree pathologist, Riker was a bacteriologist and a forest pathologist, Dickson was a cereal and forage crop specialist, and J. C. Walker was a vegetable pathologist. My father and Max Gardner recommended that I study with J. C. Walker, so that's where I wound up. I was offered a Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation [WARF] fellowship amounting to six hundred dollars for the year; but all of the fees were included, so it was worth more than just the six hundred dollars. The six hundred dollars just paid the rent. Lage: Did you get married on that? Kendrick: Oh, yes. The pioneer spirit. [laughter] We had planned that Evelyn, with her banking experience, would go to work, but her full-time job paid her the magnificent sum of seventy-five dollars a month. On that, with my sixty dollars a month and with all the fees taken care of, we managed to survive pretty well. Our rent was about fifty dollars a month. Lage: You could get by on a lot less then. 27 Kendrick: We didn't indulge in any extravagances, but we didn't feel that we were suffering or sacrificing. I have to mention that the board and room fee at Bowles Hall, during the four years that I was there, started out as fifty dollars a month. During the last year I think it got up to fifty-five. So the fall of '42, with gas rationing and tires unavailable — after being married in May and working during the summer, saving as much as we could in order to pay the apartment rent in Davis for three months, scrounging as many old tires (that still had a little tread left on them) as we could — we bundled ourselves and possessions into Evelyn's 1937 Dodge coupe and headed for Wisconsin. Lage: That must have been an adventure in itself. [laughter] Kendrick: It was. Good thing we didn't know what was ahead of us or we would not have had enough gumption to go. Life has been an adventure ever since. f* 28 II GRADUATE SCHOOL AT THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN AND WARTIME SERVICE, 1942-1947 Brother's Parallel Path in Plant Pathology Kendrick: Well. I've got some things that I think we overlooked in our first session. I need to comment a little bit more about my sister and brother. My brother and I had some uniqueness in our careers that I think is worth putting in the record. Elizabeth, my sister, is the second oldest child of the marriage of my father and mother. She was born July 11, 1926, in Lafayette, Indiana. So she and I are Hoosiers. She finished grade and high school in Davis and spent a few years at Oregon State University but did not finish there. She married a graduate from the University of California at Davis, Donald Gale, and they have had a career located in Davis and Woodland. Don is a building contractor who worked with his father, also a contractor from Winters, before he developed his own ousir.ess and became a contractor in his own right. He and my sister have three beys. They lived in Davis until Don got disillusioned with the Davis city council's slow-growth, no-growth attitude. And because his business was not thriving under that kind of an environment, he moved to Woodland. That is where they are presently and have been for a number of years. Edgar, my brother, was born in Woodland on March 23, 1928. His education through high school was in Davis and interestingly enough — I don't know the reasons why — he had an education that duplicated mine. He went to Berkeley as an undergraduate. I don't recall what his major was but it was in the botanical sciences, I'm sure, because he also went back to the University of Wisconsin after graduating from Berkeley in 1950 for his Ph.D. training in plant pathology. His major professor was one of those big-four successors to L. R. Jones, Professor Jim Dickson. So in his early career in plant pathology he dealt with ce'real crops. When it came time for him to get a professional position, he found one in Pullman. With parents, James B. , Senior, and Violet Kendrick in Ames, Iowa, 1925. University of Wisconsin Professor J.C, Walker, August 1961. Above: Professors Max Gardner (left) and J.B. Kendrick, Senior, ca 1940. Right: James B. Kendrick, Jr., 1944. 29 Kendrick: Washington, at Washington State University, but it was with the USDA in a laboratory established to study cereal diseases, and more particularly it was cauled the "smut" lab. Smut is a disease of cereals that is quite devastating, so this laboratory was set up with three or four professionals to deal with smut diseases of wheat. Lage : So he was employed by the USDA rather than the university. Kendrick: That is correct. And he spent his entire career with the USDA. His career was very similar to mine with the University of California because he ultimately was transfered to Beltsville, Maryland, the early headquarters for many of the Agriculture Research Service programs, as an administrator. From there he progressed through various administrative assignments. At one time, he was located in Tucson, where he presently has retired and is now living. His administrative assignments took him to Washington, D. C., Tucson, New Orleans, and again to Washington, D. C. While in New Orleans he had the responsibility for all the Agriculture Research Service workers in the southern region of the U.S. With the establishment of the assistant secretaryship for science and education in the USDA about six years ago, he was able to serve as the acting deputy assistant secretary for science and education with a very good friend of mine, Orville Bentley. So his career in the USDA was not unlike mine with the University of California, except that mine did not take me all over the United States. The uniqueness, and why I wanted to get it in the record, is that in plant pathology — it is not a large profession — I don't think there are many families with a father and two sons actively engaged in plant pathology at the same time. Of course, my father retired in 1960. Lage: That is an amazing record. Kendrick: So we were active, but not collaborators at the same time. Lage: You don't have an explanation for your parallel paths? Kendrick: I really do not. Except that I would guess that my father's career was attractive enough to the two of us that we saw the opportunities were there for anyone who wanted to work hard and get a good education and could follow it. My father certainly did nothing to discourage us from following him into that kind of an activity. Lage: But it wasn't an expectation. Kendrick: No. He never laid down any kind of entreating requests that we follow him [laughter] and perpetuate his interest in the field. 30 Lage: It's not like taking over the family business or anything. Kendrick: No. It's not like expecting — as a physician — that you would come back and take over the practice or, as you indicated, take over the business and keep that running. I think it was more of a feeling that it was a good life, as well as one that contributed positive benefits to others and provided a good deal of happiness in pursuing that kind of activity. There were too many years between my brother and me to have anything in common while we were growing youngsters. In subsequent years we have become close and have followed each other's activities very closely. He retired before I did. He had his thirty years of service when he reached age fifty-five and was a little tired of the administrative life that he was leading. Washington, B.C., gets under many people's skin, and they get Potomac fever; Potomac fever describes an attitude of people in the federal government who become impressed with their own importance because of the positions they occupy and the renown of their associates. But there is no question about the exciting environment of Washington, D.C. I think there are a lot of good people in Washington, D.C. I am continually impressed with the quality of people in government in certain areas, but you encounter the other kind also, frequently enough to make it unattractive to those of us who live in the "provinces." Lage: Well, your brother retired to Tucson, so that must say something about his experiences in Washington, B.C. Kendrick: Perhaps. Glenn Pound, Fellow Gradua te Student Kendrick: Let us get back to my own education. Shortly after Evelyn and I arrived in Madison in the fall of 1942 and had located the third floor turret apartment that would be our home for about nine months, we drove to the campus to try and make contact with Professor Walker. We pulled into the parking lot next to Moore Hall, which housed the agronomy and plant pathology departments, and sat for a few minutes looking bewilderedly at one another wondering, "What next?" We then saw a person walking toward us with a jaunty step and whistling a merry tune. He stopped and said, "May I help you?" "Well," we said, "You certainly can," because at that point I did not know where I was to go next as far as locating people was concerned.. That person turned out to be Glenn Pound, and that was the beginning of a long and fruitful friendship with him and his wife, Daisy. 31 Kendrick Lage: Kendrick : Lage: Kendrick Glenn was a graduate student in plant pathology and was about finished with his program of training at that point. He got his Ph.D. degree in mid 1943. Glenn's career led ultimately to the chairmanship of the Department of Plant Pathology at Wisconsin and dean of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at Wisconsin, from which position he retired. He is now living in La Jolla. He had an Arkansas twang and an unlimited supply of jokes — good jokes that were not obscene — and always had a story that was appropriate for the occasion. He has a great sense of humor and is just fun to be with, but he also possesses a keen mind and was a good leader. We continue to cherish the warm friendship that started forty-six years ago in a parking lot in Wisconsin with that, "May I help you?". His career has certain parallels with yours also. Well, to some extent. He's participated in national affairs like I have and chaired some rather significant national committees. One committee which he chaired brought him considerable notoriety. It was a committee sponsored by the National Academy of Science to study and evaluate the research program of the Agriculture Research Service (ARS) of the USDA. The committee's report was very critical of the quality and creativeness of ARS research. It received a lot of attention in the scientific press and Congress where it became known as the Pound Report. That is the fate of any chair of a committee which issues a report which has an impact. If it doesn't have an impact, you never hear about it anymore; but this was one of the early evaluations of agriculture research which pointed out that it could be very much better than it had become. Needless to say, it was controversial, and caused a certain amount of embarrassment for the USDA administration and the research participants. It was an evaluation by people external to the USDA, some of whom were not agricultural scientists. They were, however, experienced in basic biology and chemistry, and they pointed out rather forcefully that the lack of peer review and competitiveness in the system was detrimental to its quality. So the academic model did not prevail. No, not in the USDA, And ultimately, the USDA did develop a competitive grant system and one of the agencies that my brother headed for the assistant secretary just before his retirement was the Office of Competitive Grants and Special Projects. I like to think that I had a certain amount of influence in trying to get the USDA to accept the competitiveness of grants, and certainly my brother was an enthusiastic administrator of that program — so we were not without our hand in the pie, in a way. Lage: When was that Pound Report? that? Did you give us a general date on 32 Kendrick: Well, it goes back to probably the early 1970s, in that period, because I was vice president at that time, and it came along fairly early in my administrative career. We will get into some other things that followed it because I participated in a couple of evaluations myself, but that really is part of the administrative story downstream a little bit. Lage: What else did you find at Wisconsin? I know you had some things on your mind that you wanted to cover. Kendrick: As I mentioned earlier, I was fortunate, I felt, in receiving a Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation fellowship amounting to six hundred dollars a year. Lage: That would not take you too far today. Kendrick: That fifty dollars a month paid our rent. But in addition, the fellowship paid my tuition and fees, so the actual cost of going to school was taken care of by the fellowship. The Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation was developed from the proceeds of patents on inventions developed from Wisconsin research. One of the most lucrative early patents covered the irradiation of milk which caused the enhancement of vitamin D. Then the subsequent big money item was a patent on the development of warfarin [Wisconsin Alumni Research foundation + coumarin] , which is an anti-blood-clottir.g factor that came out of moldy hay. It was isolated by the biochemistry group there. It had been developed as a rat poison and is also used in medicine as an anti coagulant. We really survived by Evelyn working as a bank teller at a downtown bank in Madison for seventy-five dollars a month. We lived on that plus the savings we had made through my own activities working summers and holidays and her accumulated wealth as a bank teller in Davis, which was meager. [laughter] We really did not feel that we were suffering much, but we did not splurge either. The Lasting Influence of J. C. Walker and other Wisconsin Professors Kendrick: I want to say a little bit about J. C. Walker, the man who was my mentor. His influence has been everlasting. I think most major professors of hard-working graduate students leave some kind of impression, either good or bad; fortunately Dr. Walker's impression, on me at least, was good. But he has had a reputation of being cool, cdd, distant, hard-driving, not terribly communicative — not a person that you could warm up to. 33 Kendrick: Just the opposite of my father. My father treated his graduate students like members of the family. Dr. Walker had so many students that he could not really treat them that way. But his nature was not one of warmth, at least at that stage of his life. His technique of training was to test you initially to see if you had enough initiative and ingenuity to survive all the hard work of graduate school. He was the kind of person who puts you blindfolded into a room and says, "Find your way out." He didn't tell you where the obstacles were or where the door was; he just wanted to see how well you would solve the puzzle on your own. Lage: Is this on your research projects? Kendrick: Yes, it was in the research area, primarily. The selection of the courses that I needed to take was not solely my own decision; the courses were pretty well prescribed by Dr. Walker. I did not have many courses that I had to take, but there were some graduate courses that were necessary. Fortunately, my botany, genetics, and zoology had provided a pretty good base training. I did not have any major gaps in my training except for systematic botany, which I did not have before I went into the graduate training. My minor was in plant physiology. Dr. Walker had a very close colleague, Dr. Benjamin M. Bugger, an eminent plant physiologist who after retiring went to the Lederle Drug Company and had another career in developing antibiotics. I think it was his laboratory at Lederle that discovered aureomycin. It was a given that if you were Dr. Walker's student during those years that you were going to minor in plant physiology, and that Dr. Dugger was going to be your minor professor. Lage: So how did it feel to be thrown into this? Kendrick: Well, it was a little strange, although I would say that I was not exactly hand-fed going through Berkeley. Berkeley provides another experience where no one takes you by the hand and leads you through it. You get through Berkeley mostly by your own ingenuity and persistence. So Wisconsin was not all that different to me. My own self-starting attitude was enough for me to decide that, if that was the way to survive, then I would do what was needed to be done. But I must admit that I did not have much training in how you pursue a research program. I recall that Dr. Walker called me into his office after I had been around about a month, and he had a little paper sack. He opened it up and pulled out a couple of tomatoes. He said, "Here, Jim, what do you observe about these tomatoes?" I said, "Well, they appear to have a couple of rots." He said, "Yes, they do. Why don't you go find out what is known about them." 34 Kendrick: And that was my introduction to an early research program. It turned out that the rot was tomato ar.thracnose [spells]. I hesitate to tell you what it was caused by — Colletotrichum phomoides [spells]. Lage : [laughs] We'll have to run this as a test for our transcribers — Kendrick: You can imagine the exercise I put my wife through. She typed all of my reports, including my thesis. By the time we had finished three years of association of this kind, she got to the point where she was pretty good with the Latin. The best thing about these long, complicated words is that they are spelled just about like they sound. There are not a lot of silent letters so that if you can sort your way through the phonetics, you can come pretty close to the spelling. Lage: When you took the tomatoes back to the lab, was there anyone there to guide you along? Kendrick: Well, in research, the first thing you have to find out is what people already know about the topic you have decided to look at. After you reassure yourself of what the disease is, then you do a library search of the literature to determine what is known about the disease and where the gaps of information are. Then you begin to design experiments to get information to fill the gaps. Doc Walker's technique of research training was to keep his suggestions to a minimum and to let his students work through a problem pretty much on their own. One of his colleagues would have a weekly conference with each of his graduate students, so they really didn't have much leeway to stray from the way that particular colleague thought the problem should be handled. He wanted to guide his students, almost step by step; that was not Dr. Walker's technique. He knew that eventually you were going to be thrown out into the big, wide world on your own and there was not going to be a Doc Walker close at hand to guide you through your research. So I think part of his training plan was just to see if his students had the basic inquisitive ness to make good research workers. Lage: Was he very critical in his evaluation of you? Kendrick: Well, you can imagine I did not start off like gangbusters as the most original researcher that he had ever come in contact with. I wanted some verification of what I thought he had given me — if some of the gaps I had determined existed were correct, and if looking into some of the aspects of the disease development were the things that he thought were important — bearing in mind that the ultimate goal of plant pathology is to control the disease 35 Kendrick: that you are dealing with. You really need to keep in mind that the research in plant pathology, at least in those days, was always conducted towards taking care of the problem of disease development in the field. So our discussions really developed around that point of view. And then in order to earn my fellowship, he asked me to work with his reprints' filing system. I do not recall specifically what I was doing, but I was doing something with his literature card-file system to bring it up to date. I think he had two things in mind in assigning that task to me: one was to acquaint me with the literature, and also to help him keep his filing system current. On reflection many years later, I recognized his wisdom as a teacher in not spoon-feeding his students. He also had a reputation of being able to bawl out students who seemed to fall a little short of his expectations. So they would tread pretty lightly around him and avoid his presence if they felt that he was not feeling up to snuff that day. He was a very keen observer, which I didn't realize early on. I didn't see him regularly, and in fact I got the feeling that he did not know whether I was around or not. But in later years I realized what a keen observer he was. One episode in particular exemplifies the keenness of his observation. Much of the research conducted by Wisconsin's plant pathology graduate students was done in temperature-controlled greenhouses. And even though there seemed to be plenty of greenhouse space, it was always in great demand. The space available never quite matched the need. Well, the greenhouses were always full of students' research programs. One of my colleagues was working on a virus problem — the host plant doesn't matter and I have forgotten what it was, but it was a vegetable of some kind. He got called into Dr. Walker's office one Monday morning and was really read the riot act. Something had occurred. He soon found that Dr. Walker had gone through that greenhouse area on Saturday or Sunday morning — he was over there every day of the week usually early in the morning — and observed some aphids infesting these plants. Well, that invalidated the test, of course, because aphids are a transmitter of virus diseases, and he could not be sure of the results of his transmission tests. Doc Walker was really teeing off on the student for his sloppiness in his research technique. This episode demonstrated to me that Doc Walker was not as uninformed about our activities as it appeared. His observation of what was going on in those greenhouses was very keen and very comprehensive so there was no way of misleading him about the progress you were making in your research program. 36 Kendrick: In 1946, when I went back to Wisconsin to finish my graduate career — and I am going to fill in the time-gap later on — Dr. Walker asked if I would move into the little laboratory adjacent to his office. Most of the graduate students were in one of two rooms. The advanced graduate students were in one large room and the beginning graduate students were in another large room on another floor upstairs close to the library. So those rooms were always busy; somebody was there all the time, it seemed to me. Dr. Walker always had one of his advanced students in the little laboratory adjacent to his own office, and I happened to be the one in 1946-1947. I occupied almost a gatekeeper role because his reputation for moodiness continued even in those days. Often when a student inquired, "Is Doc in?", I'd reply "Yes, he is in." This would be followed by, "What kind of a mood is he in today?" And I would say, "In a terrible mood." The student would almost always respond, "Well, I won't go in to see him just new." It was amusing to me to be placed in that role. I had never experienced a harsh word from Dr. Walker. My colleague, Dr. Grogan, who ultimately came to Davis in plant pathology had a similar experience. There were a few students who never really had angry words from Dr. Walker. Glenn Pound also was a student of Dr. Walker, and I never heard him complain about his relationship with Doc; the name we all used to greet him and by which to refer to him. Doc was as good a student of individual personalities as he was a teacher. I think he knew those who responded to strong criticism and a dressing-down and those on whom that kind of tactic would not work. Lage : So it was all very controlled. Kendrick: That's a good way to put it. It was a controlled anger at times. I think we all have very fond memories of Doc. There are very few people — even those who were dressed up and down one way or another — who are not without great fondness for him. He still lives. He is ninety-four and lives in Sun City, Arizona. I have not seen him in many, many years. But we do hear from him at Christmas when we exchange Christmas greetings. There was one other episode which stands out and characterizes Dr. Walker's relationship with his students that I would like to record. In the spring of 1944, two of his grad students were in a laboratory adjacent to the one where I was ultimately housed during my last graduate year. These two students had a reputation of putting off things which needed doing. Something triggered Walker one day, and he went into the laboratory and cornered the individual who was the source of his ire. He was really reading the riot act to him, largely because he seemed not to be paying attention to his academic progress. He said, after a little drtissir.g-down, "Your qualifying examination is scheduled a month from today. Be ready for it." 37 Kendrick: He turned or. his heels to the other colleague who was trying to make himself as inconspicuous as possible because it was a little embarrassing to be there through that tirade. And he said, "And yours is scheduled the week following." Lage: That was their first notice of the exams? Kendrick: That was their first notice of their qualifying examinations, but the real problem was that you could not take your qualifying examination until you had satisfied your language requirements. And neither one of those individuals had satisfied their language requirement of French and German. So it meant that one of them had a month and the other had five weeks to pass their French and German examinations which were given by the respective language departments, and then get prepared for this qualifying exam. Well, they made it. [laughter] As you can imagine, that news got around that graduate student group like the spread of the plague. Lage: There was no appeal? Kendrick: No, there was no appeal. There was no room for negotiations. It was just, "You've been here long enough, and you're going to get on with it." It was another one of these Walkerisms that I remember because it had its impact. Lage: Did this approach influence you as a teacher? Kendrick: No. Well, it did to the extent that I didn't feel that it was necessary to outline in detail what I wanted my students to do. I wanted to do the same thing that Doc Walker did. Test out the ability of the students to dig through a problem for themselves. So that part of the technique I used. I didn't rant and rave as much as Doc did. [laughter] Lage: That goes with the personality, I'm sure. Kendrick: Some other impressions that I have — I didn't have many professors at Wisconsin, but of course Walker and Dugger I have mentioned. Dugger was a very kindly, soft-spoken individual in the botany department, and one who appeared to be terribly unorganized. Ke was not a good lecturer; I found it difficult to follow him. He would come into the lecture room loaded down with books and proceed to quote from various sections of those books, trying to emphasize a point that he was making. I recall going to his office to visit with him to get some references for a paper that I had to write, and it looked like the receiving room of a library. Things were stacked all over the place, and he would reach into the middle of a stack and pull out something: "Here is what I want you to look at." He seemed to know where 38 Kendrick: everything was, but it looked like organized chaos. He retired when I was in the armed service, so my successor plant physiology teacher was Professor Fritz Stauffer. Another man who left a lasting impression on me because of his work habits was Myron Backus, a professor of botany and later a professor of plant pathology. Professor Myron Backus was a mycologist, and we had to take a number of courses in nomenclature of fungi and make collections of them. Backus also was the co-teacher of the beginning course in plant pathology. All graduate students had to take it. It was really meant to show what was demanded of you if you were serious about going into plant pathology: we had to write a minor thesis once a week. During the semester we had fifteen diseases to review and summarize everything known about them in a written report. This required a lot of literature reviewing. Myron Backus left ir.e with a practice that I followed through my own teaching career. He not only graded on thoroughness and comprehensiveness of the reports, but he also corrected the grammar and spelling in them. Lage: That's probably unusual in the sciences. Kendrick: It's unusual anywhere in my experience. [laughter] I decided that I would require correct English expression from my students even though I didn't do a lot of teaching. We didn't have much opportunity at Riverside to teach until the graduate program came into being. I realized that probably one of the most valuable experiences I had learned from Professor Backus was how to write in a scientifically understandable way. And so I required the same thing in the reports which were prepared for me. I would not accept student reports until they had improved their grammar and their English. I don't recall if Backus ever did that, but we got reports back that were well covered with red pencil corrections in English and grammar. Physiology of plant disease was taught by Professor Paul Allen who was the same quality teacher as Backus, Bugger, and Walker. My other teachers in plant pathology were Joyce Riker, who taught the methods course, and Jim Dickson, who taught a cereals' disease course, and George Keitt, who taught a fruit disease course. Trademarks of Wisconsin's Training in Plant Pathology Kendrick: One important impression I gained from this early training period with Dr. Walker was that one of the most important aspects of plant pathology is the physiology of :he disease development. He also was a strong proponent of controlling plant diseases through 39 Kendrick: disease resistance and plant breeding. He didn't hold fungi cidal treatment in very high regard because I think he thought it was of temporary value — kind of an expedient, rather than ultimately getting at a more lasting control of these problems. Lage: That seems like a rather contemporary view. Kendrick: Well, his view of plant disease control was a forerunner of what we call biological control today, which is responsive to the antipesticide movement. An opposing view in the early forties was expressed by a man who felt that the study and use of fungicides was where he wanted to spend his career. He was the widely renown plant pathologist in Connecticut, James Horsfall. Because he built his reputation on the fungi cidal control of diseases, there was always a little rivalry between these two, each of whom felt that his approach probably was better than the other one. Lage: There wasn't the array of pesticides that came later, though. Kendrick: No. Pesticides used for the control of diseases in plants certainly fell far short in number of the array of chemicals that were available to control insects. So plant pathology really did not have at its disposal a lot of magic bullets. We really had to look at a lot of other means of controlling diseases. That was good basic training to have in terms of trying to deal with diseases of plants. Professor George Keitt was the epitome of a southern gentleman who was a GLemson University graduate, as was my father. He left a lasting impression on students who would listen to him because he was an early exponent of the epidemiology of disease inception and occurrence. He was working with fruit tree diseases — cherries and apples. Apple scab was a particularly tough disease to understand and control. The only way to control it was with fungi cidal sprays. But Dr. Keitt was interested in what influences in the environment triggered the early infections and the subsequent development, or lack of development, of the disease itself. So he and his students conducted experiments to measure all the environmental elements through the life cycle of the pathogens and their hosts. That was a very fundamental contribution to the understanding of disease development which demonstrated to me the importance of the environment in plant pathology. This early research also contained the same basic elements of investigation as are contained in the pest management program presently under way in the University of California. Lage: Integrated pest management? 40 Kendrick: The integrated pest management program is based upon understanding the interaction between a host and its pest and then applying some intervening technique to disrupt the progression of the interaction. Today we call this kind of study "modeling the host" and "modeling the insect or the parasite." The object is to compare them to see if you can find a weak link in the life cycle of either the host or the parasite, at which point one could intervene and disrupt the progression of the disease or insect infestation. Dr. Keitt's environmental studies were well underway when I went back there in 1942. I think Professor L. R. Jones was really the one who realized the importance of these epidemiological studies, so their origin goes back into the early twenties. Lage : So that environmental approach was focused at Wisconsin? Kendrick: It was fundamentally a Wisconsin contribution to the understanding of plant pathology. Lage: That's an interesting point. Kendrick: As I've indicated, the two fundamental concepts of pest management were contributed by Walker and Keitt: Walker being ar. exponent of disease resistance and control through breeding, and Keitt's careful measurement of the environmental factors in situ in an attempt to relate them to subsequent disease development. These were really trademarks of the Wisconsin training in plant pathology as it affected me. The first two years that I was there, I pursued anthracnose of tomato, studying the fungus — the apparent cause of the disease — and trying to find out how it existed in the field and how it over-wintered. Lage: So your interest in this assignment that he gave you in the beginning continued. Kendrick: It did. A Brief Navy Career Kendrick: Let me digress a little to show another activity of mine while at Wisconsin. I am going to describe the chronology of my United States armed service experience. Lage: It came in the middle of graduate school? 41 Kendrick: Yes. In the fall of 1942, some of my graduate colleagues and I were a little nervous about being in school while some of our colleagues were in the armed service. Bear in mind that the U.S. was engaged in World War II, and things were pretty furious in the fall of 1942. So we decided to go to Milwaukee and enlist in the navy. The navy had an attractive program called V-7. Graduates of this program were sort of ninety-day wonders, who emerged as ensigns in the officer corps of the United States Navy. Ray Grogan — whom I mentioned earlier and who has just retired as a professor of plant pathology at the Davis campus where he spent his career — and I together with several others decided to enroll in the V-7 program. Ray was inducted into the V-7 program after passing the physical examination, and I was inducted into what was described as the V-7S program. They told me that I was put inV-7S because my eyesight wouldn't allow them to qualify me for the regular V-7 program. Well, I didn't have very poor eyesight, but I was wearing glasses. I have astigmatism, which doesn't permit me to read very well without correction. So I said, "Well, that sounds ok to me. What is the V-7S?" They said, "Oh, it's a special program for developing meteorologists and weather forecasters." And that sounded fine. But they also said, "You don't have enough college math to qualify for that program." "Oh, I don't? What do you suggest?" "Well, go back and enroll in a college math program and get some more math." Kendrick: We were inducted into the navy that afternoon as inactive apprentice seamen. My friend Grogan, however, was activated at the end of that fall term, and he went into regular service then. Since I was asked to take an additional course in math, I enrolled in a course in the spring of 1943 while I was in this inactive status. At the end of the spring semester I got a notice from the naval district in Chicago that merely stated I had failed to qualify for the V-7S program. I was a little flabbergasted and I wondered if something had happened with my grade in the math course that I was unaware of. I had not been a diligent attender of the math course, but I took all the examinations, and based on my performance in them, I did not expect to fail that course. Well, I quickly checked on my grade and found that I had gotten a B so I was reassured about that. It then took me about three weeks to find out precisely why I had failed. You will recall I mentioned in the previous session that majoring in botany, zoology, and genetics was a bit difficult to explain throughout my career. They navy replied that they didn't 42 Kendrick: have a place in the navy officer V-7S program for someone who had majored in botany, zoology, and genetics. They gave me two options: one was to activate me as an apprentice seaman and assign me to wherever I seemed to be qualified, and the other was to return me to selective service status, in which case they would give me an honorable discharge. I wasn't attracted to being an apprentice seaman, so I selected the option to have an honorable discharge. I got one. I then noted that after going back to selective service status my draft number was slow to come up. So I continued in school, working very hard to finish the required courses, to get the language examinations taken care of, and to get the qualifying oral examination out of the way. I did all of that in the fall of '43 and the spring of '44. By early spring of '44, I decided that I had had enough of being a civilian while all hell was breaking loose around us. And so when I had finished my qualifying examination, I was determined that I would ask for induction. Army Training and Assignments; A Waiting Game Kendrick: Once again, Evelyn and I packed up our 1937 Dodge coupe, mustered all the gas coupons we could find, and on tires that looked like they couldn't make it across the country, came back to California. I was inducted into the U.S. Army at the Presidio in Monterey in June of 1944. I was sent to Camp Barkley, Texas, which was located near Abilene, for basic training in a medical unit — field medics. It was one of the most miserable hot summers that I have ever experienced. It was that experience where I probably lost any enthusiasm for camping that might have been latent in my plans for future recreational activities. Lage: Made you wished you'd stayed in the navy, probably. Kendrick: [laughs] No, I never reflected back on having made that choice. I realize that basic training is basic training no matter where you go, but when you're experiencing it, it's like a toothache. You wish it would go away. I might say that my army experience as an enlisted person left another lasting impression that upon reflection I think was good for me. Because associations were determined by the first letter of your last name, the alphabet had more to do with arranging your living groups than anything else. You live in a communal relationship, so if somebody snored loudly or was 43 Kendrick: particularly obnoxious, you couldn't exclude him from your group because his last name placed him with the "Ks". You had to somehow get along, and try to subjugate your own peculiarities to an extent that you were not obnoxious yourself. You had to develop a tolerance for other people's individualities that I think did me a lot of good. Lage: You meet a lot of types you probably wouldn't have met. Kendrick: You meet a lot of types, all right, that open up your eyes a good deal. Having been assigned to a medical unit I confess was somewhat of a self-selection process because the basic education of a lot of these inductees was pretty good. There were some college graduates along with me, so the process of grouping was not completely random among all inductees. Even so, there were some very different individuals in my group. Following basic training, we all were advanced to some specialized training where selection was based on background and aptitude. I was selected for special training as a medical laboratory technician and sent to Fort Benjamin Harrison, near Indianapolis, Indiana, for three months. That was late fall and winter of 1944. Evelyn came back and spent a couple of months living in a room in a house in a small community near the base. So during what time I did get off from training, we had some time together to become acquainted with Indianapolis. There are not a lot of things I remember about Indianapolis, except the winter was very cold, and we tired of eating in restaurants. After finishing that program to become a laboratory technician — which provided me with training in parasitology, serology, blood chemistry, and urinalysis — I felt constructively trained, and I enjoyed the expanded knowledge I had received. But then began a long frustrating period waiting for an assignment as a medical laboratory technician. I was really disillusioned when I didn't go right out into a medical laboratory, either in a field unit or in an established hospital. Lage: They must have needed lab technicians. Kendrick: Well, I thought so, but the way my training was wasted you would have never guessed it. After my Indianapolis training I was sent to Camp Crowder, Missouri, where I waited about a month for an assignment and was eventually assigned as a medical orderly in a hospital-train unit operating out of Stater. Island, New York. For about four months — which turned out to be pretty good duty — I rode hospital trains across the country. This was the time when we were Kendrick: engaged in the Battle of the Bulge in Europe, which resulted ir. a lot of casualties to our troops. Our unit was receiving these returning casualties and distributing them to army hospitals across the country. We would be on constant duty for quite a while on those hospital trains, so when we returned to Stater. Island, we would have several consecutive days off duty. That gave us ample time to explore the Big Apple. New York City was a marvelous city for service personnel in those days. You could get free tickets to Broadway plays and almost any entertainment event scheduled. So I saw a lot of New York City at that time. But I still was not doing what I thought I was going to be able to do, and that was working in the laboratory. I suddenly was sent I think to some camp in Arkansas, I don't recall which one that was now, where I waited yet another period for an assignment. This time I was sent to an army hospital in Daytona Beach, Florida. That was in the summer of 1945. They sent me down there to a hospital, finally, as a laboratory techni car- Hooray I I thought I was finally going to get to do something for which I was trained. So I showed up at the hospital, and the doctor in charge took one look at me and said, "You're here to do what?", or words to that effect. He was less than cordial in his welcome. I didn't learn until later that the reason he was not cordial was that they had been transferring existing personnel with some disabilities from his hospital laboratory. They were sending them overseas to field hospitals. Then I showed up able-bodied and brand new, and he was furious that the army would take an experienced technician who really wasn't in 1A physical condition and send as a replacement someone who was physically able and inexperienced and [laughs] who ought to have been relocated to the war zone. So I lasted one day. The officer in charge said he wouldn't have anything to do with me. I spent another week or so waiting for new orders. Those came in due course, and I was reassigned to the army transportation unit at Fort Lawton, Seattle, Washington. Lage : Well, you got all about the country, then. Kendrick: I boarded the train in Daytona Beach and headed for Seattle, Washington. You can't design a train trip much longer than that in the United States. I don't recall just how long it took to get there, but it was a long trek. In the late summer of 1945, I was working in the base hospital in the serology laboratory at Fort Lawton, my first laboratory assignment after being trained the previous year as a 45 Kendrick: laboratory technician. That's when I really learned how to draw blood from people's arms. We were doing a lot of serological surveys of service personnel, mostly for malaria. That assignment was another holding operation for me until medical units were formed and assigned to hospital units aboard troop-ship carriers. I was assigned to a medical complement unit aboard the army troop transport called the SS Marine Flasher. (Flasher is the name of a fish.) These were C-4 transports that had the capacity for about 3,500 troops. We had a small hospital on board with 125— bed capacity. The unit's personnel consisted of a physician who was the medical unit's commander and the enlisted personnel who provided the support. There were about twelve of us, and I was the laboratory technician, another person was the pharmacist, several others were the surgical assistants, and then there were some medical assistants and male nurses. The ship was brand-new, still receiving some finishing touches in San Francisco when I was sent from Seattle to San Francisco in the late fall to join the ship's complement. The interesting thing about that particular ship was the mixture of units which composed its crew. The army was in charge of the ship in terms of its command. The merchant marines were in charge of operating the ship, so the captain of the ship was a civilian in the merchant marines, as were his crew. We also had a small navy complement on it to handle the few guns and what little other armament that we had for our protection. So we had a mixture of army, navy, and merchant marine personnel aboard this ship. This assignment came after Hiroshima. The Marine Flasher was one of many ships which at that time were being assembled for the invasion of Japan. So when the war came to an end in August after we dropped the atomic bomb, there were a lot of reassignments and redirections. As I recall, we sailed on Christmas Eve with replacement troops and civilian personnel on board. Our destination was Jinsan (now called Inchon), Korea, by way of Two Jim a, Okinawa, and Shanghai. We had a very rough crossing. We just missed the tail end of a devastating typhoon but experienced a lot of rough sea near Okinawa. There wasn't much left of Okinawa when we pulled into one of the bays there. As the sole laboratory technician, I had a lot of experience helping with the diagnosis of venereal diseases, and on the return trip with the war veterans there were interesting diseases involving parasites causing intestinal problems and a lot of malaria. I really enjoyed the microscopic search and identification of parasites in the blood and in the intestinal tract. 46 Kendrick: We had a good stop in Shanghai for three or four days. I dor.'t know just why we were there, but we were. In Korea we loaded up the vets who had been through Okinawa and returned them to Long Beach, California. It was many years later that I discovered a close colleague of mine, Ivan Thomason, was among those 3,500 troops on board the Marine Flasher on that trip to Long Beach. Ivan grew up in Davis and is about the age of my brother. Ke is now a professor of hematology on the Riverside campus, is also a Wisconsin plant pathology graduate, and another Calif orr.iar. who was sent back to Mecca for training — he did his undergraduate work on the Davis campus. Lage : Interesting that you even discovered it. Kendrick: I don't know how we did, but we've been close friends for a long, long time, and I think we were probably reminiscing about our respective experiences in the war. He reminded me that the troops referred, not so affectionately, to the Marine Flasher as the "Latrine Splasher." [laughter] I think it was probably more accurately described by them than by us. We had good duty on board ship. Our quarters were on the top deck, in the high-rent district of present-day cruise ships. I was nevertheless anxious to termin ate my service career as soon as possible because the war was over. I was anxious to get on with my graduate school program. We docked in Long Beach in about February of 1946. The war was over, and as I indicated, even though I enjoyed the ship duty, I was not anxious to continue it much longer. I stayed out of the officer training program because I decided that my non- officer status would shorten my obligation to stay in the service. I decided to petition for a discharge to return to school, and it was eventually granted. I was sent to the Oakland Army Base and then to Camp Beale near Marysville where I was discharged. So after those two years, because of all the changed assignments and waiting which prevented me from being in one spot long enough to accumulate any kind of a record, I was separated at the rank of private first class. I made one advancement in the spring of 1946. Well, my time in the armed service is a period that I cherish because it was a broadening experience. I think it influenced my subsequent dealing with people which would have been different if I hadn't had that kind of experience. And one of the unique things about my experience in the service is that I possess an honorable discharge from both the army and the navy in World War II, with eight months of inactive service in the navy and about twenty-three months of active service in the army. During the period I was in the service, with the exception of the three months I was in Indiana, Evelyn lived with her parents on the farm between Winters and Davis and worked in the Bank of America in Davis. 47 Completing the Ph.D. ; Research on Bacterial Canker of Tomato Kendrick: Evelyn and I bundled up our meager belongings and again trekked back across the country in our 1937 Dodge coupe, which by that time was getting close to being worn out, but it was all we had. We returned to the same apartment at 204 North Mills Street, which had become a plant pathology apartment by that time, because when it became vacant the landlady would rent it to another graduate student from plant pathology. My brother and his first wife lived in the same apartment we occupied when they went back to school in subsequent years. So in May of 1946 I went back to Wisconsin for my final year of graduate work. Because there had been so much time elapsed between the anthracnose work and getting back into the swing of things in 1946, I was assigned a new research project. This time Doc Walker didn't start me out like he did with the tomato anthracnose problem. He said, "I'd like to have you take over the drip system." The drip system consisted of a greenhouse full of tubing and crocks where various mixtures and concentrations of nutrients were dripped constantly into pots of sand in which we grew plants. It was like hydroponics with sand added for support of the plants. He said, "I think we ought to follow the study that Foster," another of his graduate students, "has done on fusarium wilt of tomato with a bacterial problem of tomato. So why don't you do a study on bacterial canker of tomato?" "Fine with me, Doc," I said. Lage : Was that the usual thing, that the professor would more or less assign a research topic? Kendrick: It was the usual thing with Walker. I don't know that that was necessarily true for all of his students, but he usually laid out the general outline of the research problem. That was the way he operated and was reason enough for him to share the authorship with his students of the journal papers which arose from the research. So my thesis problem involved a study of nutritional and environmental influences on the development of bacterial canker of tomato. The causal organism of this disease is a mouthful, which I've written here, Corynebacterium michiganense. It was a disease with which I was familiar because my father had worked with it in California, and it was a particularly destructive disease for tomatoes. It's highly contagious and easy to pass on to other plants by handling them. At that time field-grown tomatoes were seeded first in nursery beds. When the seedling plants were several months old, they were pulled and then 48 Kendrick: transplanted into the field. They don't do that any more; they seed them directly into the field and this is the best way to control this particular disease. But when tomato seedlings were grown in those nurseries, and an infection occurred in a dense population of plants, it was easy to infect a lot of plants, and it's fatal. You don't get any tomatoes from a plant that's infected by Corynebacterium. The results of my nutritional study were published in the American Journal £f Botany in 1948, Volume 35, under the title "Plant Nutrition in Relation to Disease Development, IV: Bacterial Canker of Tomato." Walker and his students developed a series of nutritional studies of various diseases. I had also taken advantage of the environmentally controlled facilities that existed at Wisconsin in the plant pathology greenhouse to study the effect of soil and air temperatures on predisposing the tomato to subsequent development of bacterial canker. So I got another research paper out of the thesis that was entitled "Predisposition of Tomato to Bacterial Canker." That one was published in the Journal of Agricultural Research, Volume 77, 1948. To show that none of the time I spent studying tomato anthracnose was wasted, I also published a paper on anthracnose of tomato. So out of the three years I spent in Wisconsin, three early papers resulted from my professional activity and from Walker's overall guidance and advice. Lage: How was it decided to publish one in the Journal ^f Agricultural Research and one in the American Journal ^f Botany? Were they of a different nature? Kendrick: Well, the Journal jaf Agricultural Research ceased publication in 1949. The reason that the American Journal _of Botany was selected for the nutrition study was because that's where the series had started. The Journal _of Agricultural Research was also a highly respected journal. Lage: Did they have different orientations? Kendrick: The paper and the series I think probably would have been more appropriately published in the Journal of Agricultural Research or in Phytopathology, which is the journal of the plant pathology profession. But authors who published the first paper of this series chose the American Journal of Botany for whatever reason, and maybe Walker just wanted to spread his papers around a little bit. It was a respected journal and had a good review policy, so that's where it went. 49 Kendrick : The Journal of Agricultural Research was published by the United States Department of Agriculture, and as its name implied, it was intended that a wide variety of research related to agriculture be published in that journal. It had a good and rigorous review policy. The plant pathologists discovered that it was a prestigious place to publish their own research, and in the latter part of its existence, it became more of a plant pathology journal than a general agricultural research journal. I think the USDA, seeking some economy, decided that they really couldn't support a journal publication which was used almost exclusively by one segment of the agricultural scientists. So it was terminated about two volumes after the one which I published in. We were sorry to see it go because it was a good publication and had good circulation. So it was a real loss as far as plant pathologists were concerned. Well, the best thing about finishing my work at Wisconsin is that Walker wouldn't let you get away with just an unpublishable thesis. You had to almost immediately prepare your thesis for journal publication. As you can see, within a period of a year following the granting of my doctor's degree, we had some publications to show for my research efforts. When I returned to Wisconsin in 1946, I was given another Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation assistant ship. In addition I had my GI benefits, so we felt that we were living on easy street. I recall I was paid about $250 a month. Since the WARF assistantship took care of the tuition, and the GI Bill took care of the books and all the other fees associated with school, we determined that Evelyn didn't need to work, and she didn't. She spent her time typing my reports and my thesis. She earned every bit of the remuneration that was coming our way. Our recreation was modest; it consisted mostly of bridge games with our colleagues, an occasional show, but most of the time was pretty much involved in the research program. I had to do a thorough job of the research, accumulate and analyze the data, and then write about it, and all that was done within a year. We figured that if you spent much more time than three years in the program to get a Ph.D., something was wrong. That certainly is not the case nowadays. Lage: Kendrick: Oh, five or six years. In your field, plant pathology, how long would you say people spend now? Lage: But three was the average then? Kendrick: It was not just in plant pathology. Three was about average. They wanted you in and out of the place as soon as possible, [laughter] They didn't want you to hang around. One of the 50 Kendrick: reasons that these two colleagues whom I spoke about earlier incurred Dr. Walker's displeasure was that they were taking longer than he felt was necessary. They did not go into the service; they were doing some assistar.tship work, not necessarily associated with their thesis work. But they were very leisurely about getting things done, and they were stretching it out too long in his judgment, and he wanted to put the fire under their feet to get them moving. Appointment at the Citrus Experiment Station, Riverside Kendrick: Well, I took my oral examination, the final examination, in May of 1947. I had negotiated for a position at the University of California's Citrus Experiment Station during that spring of 1947. This opportunity came to my attention through an inquiry to Dr. Walker, who seemed to be on the inside circuit for any position which was available anywhere for plant pathologists. His students, if not in demand, at least had a good running start on positions just because they were Dr. Walker's students. His reputation for training was not confined to just Wisconsin. So it was to our benefit to be one of Walker's students. Ke brought to my attention that the Department of Plant Pathology at Riverside was looking for someone to work in the area of vegetable pathology at the Citrus Experiment Station, in collaboration with John Middleton. John was the only plant pathologist in southern California working with vegetables, and it was a little overwhelming for one person to cover. Dr. L. J. Klotz had just assumed the headship of that department, following the retirement of Howard [S.] Fawcett, who was the longtime previous head of plant pathology at Riverside. Fawcett was a very famous citrus pathologist who came from Florida and had made a tremendous reputation for himself. I never really got to know Dr. Fawcett; I was acquainted with him, but he had retired by the time I showed up. So my negotiation was with Dr. Klotz. He was negotiating at the time with two of us. One was Dr. Baines, who was at Purdue University at the time, whom he was anxious to have join the department to pursue nematology problems in citrus, and I was the other. Drs. Klotz and Middleton finally agreed that I was the person they wanted, and I wasted no time in agreeing to return to California, which was really a lucky circumstance. I did not have my heart set on returning to California when I went into graduate training. I was prepared to go wherever the opportunity seemed 51 Kendrick: to present itself. I participated in the formal graduation ceremonies at the University of Wisconsin and received my Ph.D. degree on May 24, 1947. It is interesting to note the relative size between the undergraduate bachelor of arts degree from the University of California and the Ph,D. underneath it [points to framed degrees on wall — laughter] — Lage: The University of California degree must be three times the size. Kendrick: I think the importance of the two bear little relationship to their size. But anyway, it was a happy day in Evelyn's and my life. My father and mother came from Davis to attend the graduation. I felt I was on top of the world because the dean of the graduate school at Wisconsin was presenting the candidates for graduate degrees to the president of the university. He saved the Ph.D.'s until the last group on the program. There were some M.D.'s awarded at the ceremony and they honored the medical graduates adequately. But when the dear, came to the Ph.D.'s, he had nothing but praise for the people who were being awarded the highest academic degree universities could give. He really laid it on about the tremendous accomplishments and promise of these graduates and how much the people of the world would benefit from the work of these scholars in the future. You sort of felt like you walked across the platform with a cloud under your feet. I think he laid it on a little strong, but he was making sure that the M.D.'s realized that they were just practitioners, and the PKD.'s were the creative scholars. Anyway, we quickly packed up and headed back to California in our 1937 Dodge coupe once again and arrived in Riverside the second week of June in 1947. My appointment had begun on June 1 as a junior plant pathologist in the Agricultural Experiment Station. Lage: So this was a pure research position? Kendrick: Yes, and the salary was the magnificent sum of $3,700 a year. Lage: Well, it was magnificent compared to what you had. Kendrick: It was sure a lot more than I was getting as a graduate student. Lage: Was that competitive with salaries at other institutions? Kendrick: Yes. Lage: Were there very many openings at the time? Kendrick: As I recall, there were not a lot of openings, but I didn't make this choice completely on my own. I was encouraged by Dr. Walker, who knew a little bit about what was at Riverside, to 52 Kendrick: accept that position. I had a little advantage for the position at Riverside because of my father and his colleague, Dr. Gardner, who knew people at Riverside. Also, some of their colleagues had been a part of Riverside's early staff and had returned to Berkeley. Dr. Barrett, who was back in the Plant Pathology Department at Berkeley, was one of the early staff members at Riverside. Riverside had a reputation at that point as a place without a lot of rigor. I think the reason that it got that reputation was because it was solely research-oriented. It did not have any formal student instruction at that point. I think the reputation wasn't deserved because they had many highly qualified and productive staff members, but I can recall hearing the comment, •XDh, you're going to go to Riverside to retire?" about a senior colleague who was moving to Riverside. Lage: That's a bit hard to take. Kendrick: Certainly at twenty-seven, I wasn't ready to think about retiring. And it had an exciting new program. Middleton was a vigorous young man, and the Citrus Experiment Station was beginning to add staff to its program to broaden its attention to things. Some of it you will see in reading Al Boyce's autobiography.* I ought to say that he certainly didn't regard Riverside as a place to retire because he had a lot of rigor and activity. I think it was a case of being a place where the sole attention was research; it didn't have the distractions of academic life at a regular campus with its committees, the academic senate, and students' schedules to interfere with doing research in the field. Some of that criticism, I think, was envy. * Alfred M. Boyce, Odyssey ol an Entomologist. UC Riverside Foundation, 1987. Boyce had a leading role in the Citrus Experiment Station from 1952 to 1968. 53 III CITRUS EXPERIMENT STATION, RIVERSIDE Work of an Agricultural Researcher [Date of Interview: 9/15/87] ## Lage: Today we're going to focus on Riverside, your Riverside experience. Kendrick: Last time I described finishing our stay at Madison, the graduation ceremonies, bundling up what meager possessions we had, and once again getting that much worn-out 1937 Dodge coupe back across the country. We didn't quite make it to Riverside on the date of my official appointment, which was June 1, 19A7, but we did arrive in town on the 6th of June. I had obtained permission from Dr. KLotz to delay my arrival by stopping briefly in Davis and consulting about some of the disease problems associated with California's agriculture. The impression we had coming over Caj on Pass was really a thrilling one. We arrived in the early evening when it was still daylight. In 1947, of course, smog had not taken over the environment, and you could see forever. Riverside was located in an inland valley, and as we drove in we could see the many palm trees and the citrus groves and smelled the fragrance of the orange blossoms. It just looked like an ideal place to begin our life and to settle down and realize that this was a bit close to pa radi se . We enjoyed Riverside. In those days, it was a city of about 45,000 people: large enough to provide you with some degree of anonymity if you wanted it, but small enough to acquire friends and recognition if that was what you wanted. We felt particularly fortunate in being able to settle in Riverside because it seemed to be only one hour away from everything that was fun to do. It was an hour from Los Angeles; it was about an 54 Kendrick: Lage: Kendrick! Lage: Kendrick: hour from the beaches of the Pacific Ocean; it was an hour away from Lake Arrowhead and the mountains; it was an hour away from the desert and Palm Springs. It seemed to be just about an hour's drive from a whole array of attractive extracurricular kinds of activities, which we participated in in due course. Dr. L. J. KLotz was the chairman of the Department of Plant Pathology at that time. He was the person with whom I negotiated the employment in the first place. He was a newly appointed department chairman succeeding Dr. Howard Fawcett who had been the previous chairman for many years. (I think at that stage of the development of leadership in departments they were called department heads which was later changed to chairmanships.) My association was to be with Dr. John T. Middleton, who was working with the diseases of vegetables in southern California. The position I occupied was a new position, created for the specific purpose of working with John and expanding the efforts of the department into a study of diseases of vegetables in that part of the state. Was this a new direction for the station? name "Citrus Experiment Station." How — I'm thinking of the Yes. We spent a good deal of time trying to explain to the community that the Citrus Experiment Station contained people working on crops in addition to citrus and subtropical plants. The use of the name. Citrus Experiment Station, was legitimate because the station was established originally to work on citrus problems primarily. The Department of Plant Pathology at Riverside took on crops other than citrus and dates with the appointment of George Zentmyer and John Middleton. Both of those men were appointed, I believe, about 1944. John may have been appointed a little earlier, but not much. John's addition to the staff was solely for the purpose of addressing the problems of vegetables. Dr. Zentmyer was given the responsibility of pursuing avocado diseases, primarily. So it was a fairly new expansion. That's true. I would say in the early forties. Date problems had always been handled by Dr. Donald Bliss, another member of the department, in addition to his citrus studies. The date plantings were in the Palm Springs and Indio areas. So prior to the early 1940s nearly everybody else in the department was working on citrus problems. Southern California, or our area of jurisdiction, covered San Luis Obispo County and all counties south of that. So we had a lot of geography to handle and felt relatively uninhibited in pursuing the probltms. 55 Kendrick: I was appointed as a junior plant pathologist at the annual salary of $3,700. At a reception for my retirement, the present dean, Dean Sherman, had gone back into the files and had retrieved a copy of my appointment document. He had it framed and gave it to me. I said, "I thought there was a directive covering the purging of files to eliminate documents which were beyond their useful lifetime." [laughs] It was not until I got this particular copy of my appointment that I discovered that the position had been authorized at $3,900 a year. So somebody had decided to save some money. Lage: And see if they could get you for less. Kendrick: And got me for $3,700 a year. Lage: I think it's amazing that you remember. Kendrick: Well, what I do remember was that during the first year and a half, there were some unexpected salary adjustments. That was a period when the University was providing regular salary adjustments because their salaries had fallen behind those in other comparable educational positions. I felt that I had really stumbled into a great opportunity for salary growth. The fact that the position was newly created and I was not occupying a vacated position meant that I had an opportunity to kind of establish my own program of work. The justification for the position provided, however, some restriction in the areas in which I began my research career. Dr. Middleton and I did quite a bit of traveling to begin with, so that I could become acquainted with the vegetables in southern California, which were quite extensive and varied. And also to gain some appreciation for the diseases that were affecting them. I recall a meeting with the then director of the Citrus Experiment Station which was little more than a courtesy visit. Dr. Leon Batchelor was the director at that time. A very stern and proper New England gentleman, he seemed not to smile very much. I noticed Al Boyce described him in his book as on the face of things pretty stern and strict, but if you got to know him, quite warm and concerned. He, nevertheless, fit my mental image of a director. He welcomed me to the staff at the Citrus Experiment Station. He did use the occasion to point out that the staff was there to solve problems for the grower and wished me well. But I didn't see a lot of him after that. Dr. Klotz was a warm and very informal person. Very supportive, but not one that really had a lot of advice to give on how to get my program underway. My guide through all this was really John Middleton. 56 Lage: They said you're there to solve problems for the grower, but did they give any further direction on how to relate to the grower? Kendrick: No, it was pointed out that the Citrus Experiment Station could be asked about field problems, and we were there to solve those problems. Lage: To find out what they were? Kendrick: Yes. So the early experiments with John and our travels throughout most of that region in southern California was a gigantic learning experience for me. Although at Wisconsin I had done a little traveling, it was in this first assignment that I got some appreciation of the real world in terms of plant pathology and the problems associated with growing plants in large commercial areas. The agriculture of Wisconsin and California aren't even close to being similar: the diseases were different; the magnitude and size of the operations were different. So it was really like starting all over again. One of the things I noticed most was the gap between instruction, where we were mostly looking at pure cultures and single diseases, to a natural situation, where we were dealing with complexes and multiple infections by various pathogens. It is really very different. I didn't have much experience and formal training in how you begin to sort out those complexes and isolate the causes. So that knowledge came from learning by the "seat of the pants" mostly. John and I had formed a pretty good team, and we were very compatible. Some things we did together, and other things we did separately. He suggested that I take on the responsibility of looking after the lima bean industry of southern California, which was fairly extensive at that time, concentrated some in San Luis Obispo County but mostly in Ventura, Orange, Los Angeles, and San Diego Counties. Also, to look at pepper diseases, both of sweet pepper and of chili pepper. I found that the peppers were infected mostly with virus diseases of various kinds that needed to be identified and catalogued. The lima bean problems were mostly root rets complicated with some infestations by a worm called the wire worm. Lage: Would there have been a growers association that came to the Experiment Station and asked for help on these problems? Kendrick: There was a lima bean growers association, yes, but they really had not come to the Experiment Station as an association. The organization in the southern part of the state that looked after all vegetables was called the Western Growers and Shippers 57 Kendrick: Association. It is now known as the Western Growers Association, and is an organization of vegetable growers in Arizona and California, a fairly significant and powerful growers-supported organization. That was the association where we made contact if we needed to. I would say that the most significant grower contact was through the [Agricultural] Extension Service at that time. It was really in response to some of the extension staff in Ventura County that I started my field associations with extension and with the field problems. It was through extension that I was introduced to and became acquainted with a number of growers with whom I worked and had field experiments on their properties. So rather than working with the commodity associations per se, even though I w as acquainted with them, extension personnel played a more prominent role in my field work. In this regard it was the extension personnel who stayed in touch with commodity and grower associations, so it was only natural to cooperate with the extension people in dealing with field problems. Lage: It seems like the crops and the problems must have been multiple, and how you choose — Kendrick: Well they were. I've mentioned that I started with those two crops, but I quickly found myself working with tomato blight, celery pink rot, cantaloupe crown blight, and smog damage to leafy vegetables. I worked also with carrot blight. There seemed to be no limitation to the work. At one point I was dealing with a problem of cucumbers that were being grown for pickles in the El Monte region. Most of the rural area where I spent much of my time in those early days is now, of course, composed of incorporated cities of Los Angeles County. But in the days when we started our work, Los Angeles County was the leading agricultural county in the nation, as far as the value of the commodities that were being produced there was concerned. The major reason for that ranking was due to the concentration of dairies in Los Angeles County to supply the milk needed for that large population. Those dairies subsequently were forced to move, and moved in two directions. They moved to western San Bernardino County and concentrated in the Chino area. The rest of them sold out and moved into the southern part of the San Joaquin Valley. Lage: So you were there during the period of the transformation of Los Angeles County? Kendrick: Yes. Long Beach and Lakewood — Long Beach of course was a city at the time, but Lakewood was to some extent a bean patch. Orange County was still Orange County when we were there, and the El 58 Kendrick: Monte- Covina-Puente area produced vegetables, citrus, and some ornamentals. Carrots were concentrated in Chino and El Monte, but the El Monte-Covina area was an important cauliflower and cucumber area, grown for gherkins, little pickles. Cabbage, celery was produced in Venice. So it was really quite agricultural. The San Fernando Valley was full of walnuts and citrus, mainly tree crops. The rapidity with which all those regions were developed into urban settlements accounts for the rapid development of smog, as well as leaving nostalgic memories of what it used to be. Lage: It's a beautiful setting. You have to remind yourself now when you go down there and can hardly see through the smog. Kendrick: There was never really any doubt in my mind as what my Experiment Station responsibility was. The job, as I indicated, was justified on the basis that Middleton needed assistance in addressing the multitude of problems associated with the great variety of vegetables in that part of the country. They were a valuable part of the total agriculture. Agricultural Constituency in Southern California Kendrick: The Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce was a very influential organization in the agricultural circle. It had a subcommittee, an agricultural committee, which was the organization that had more than j ust a casual interest and influence in the development of the program in southern California to address agricultural problems of citrus, avocadoes, and vegetables. This agricultural committee's chair was Doc Clements, who when I first became acquainted with him was about eighty-five years old. He was really recognized as the patriarch of the organized influence on the University of California to focus attention on agricultural problems in that part of the state. He also was the organizer of what was called the San Andreas Group. Les Remmers, one of my farmer-cooperators with whom I worked in the San Juan Capistrano area, introduced me to this group and invited me to several of their social events. San Andreas Canyon, close to Palm Springs, was an area where they used to retreat to, and a number of them had built desert homes there. They would meet there on a semiannual basis for bull sessions, discussions, poker playing and camaraderie. 59 Kendrick: You felt privileged if you were a part of that San Andreas Group, because they were the movers and shakers of the agricultural scene in southern California. They had no reluctance to invite President Robert Gordon Sproul or Dean Claude Hutchison to meet with them in order to arm-twist them into allocating resources to augment the efforts in agriculture in southern California. The leaders involved with major citrus holdings, such as the Limonera Ranch, the Sespe Ranch, and Sunkist and Blue Anchor were all part of that power structure. Lage: Was that part of the power structure that got the station established in the first place, which I guess goes way back? Kendrick: Well, I think their forerunners were certainly instrumental in doing so, although I don't know. The history that I read is not that clear on that subject. But there were individuals who ultimately were a part of that structure that were instrumental in capturing the attention of the University's Agriculture Experiment Station and they devoted their effort to getting a station established. The station really owes its origin to a pathological problem in walnuts, which is why I think the first person sent down to southern California to establish the Whittier lab was Ralph E. Smith, who was the chairman of the Department of Plant Pathology here at Berkeley. He was the first director of the Citrus Experiment Station, but it was really not the Citrus Experiment Station at that time. It was the Whittier Laboratory, which was a pathological laboratory established to address the problems of walnuts. When it looked like there was going to be a bigger commitment than just to walnuts, several communities vied for the location of an experiment station. They were Pomona, the San Fernando Valley interests, and the Riverside interests. There is a history of Board of Regents' action, resulting somewhat surprisingly in selecting Riverside, but they were heavily lobbied to do that. There might be confusion about the name "Citrus Experiment Station" when the initial problem bringing Ralph Smith to southern California was a walnut disease problem. However, there was so much more citrus acreage than walnut acreage in southern California, and so many problems with citrus, that the southern California agricultural interests were determined to have an experiment station devoted to citrus problems too. I think it was foreordained that the University's agricultural research effort in southern California be named the Citrus Experiment Station, because of the prominence of citrus in the region at that time. I don't have my hands on it — I think it's in the hands of Loy Sammet — but there's a history that Ralph E. Smith wrote about his own involvement in plant pathology development in the 60 Kendrick: University of California, which includes a lot of the early activity in the southland. It is valuable in terms of filling in the record and the early activities as far as the Citrus Experiment Station is concerned. I know that there's a copy of it in the plant pathology department at Berkeley. So the record's not lost. Lage: I think that it's important just to refer to its existence here. Kendrick: The successor to Doc Clements, who was a physician and had a special interest in plants and their problems, was Calvin Bream, an employee at the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce. He took over the responsibility for this subcommittee in agriculture. I believe that the agricultural subcommittee of the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce still exists today. While they don't have an activity and interest in farms that they had in the thirties and forties and fifties, they have maintained themselves as an interested unit. But during those years of Clements and Calvin Bream, it was a source of support and contact with the community. You always made certain that they knew what you were doing and what your needs were. As I said, my assignment with the Agricultural Experiment Station was never in doubt: the position was justified and created on the basis that whoever occupied it would address the problems of vegetables in southern California. Investigating Vegetable Diseases Kendrick: The experiment station operates on a project system. Everyone who is a member of the regular staff works on approved projects. To have a project approved, you conceived of how and what you wanted to work on, and gave it to the department chairman for review and approval. The chairman would sign off and send it to the associate director of the experiment station, who would sign off and then send it on to the director, and then the director would sign off. It was really the first introduction to the bureaucracy that I was ultimately to become a part of. And then we were expected to file annual reports on those projects, on what was accomplished, what had been published, what we proposed to do in the future, how we were proposing to go about it, and a modest literature review. The project that I was associated with most of the time that I was at Riverside was really conceived, I thought, with a great deal of wisdom. It was not very satisfying to the administration, but it was extremely satisfying to John and me. It was Project 1085, and the title was "An Investigation of Vegetable Diseases in Southern California," which meant that we did net have to revise that project. It had no termination date. We kept it 61 Kendrick: current by identifying subunits under the project, as we would change our work schedule to address different problems with different diseases and different host plants. It was a constantly changing saga, but as far as the title was concerned, it never changed. In later years, that became somewhat of an embarrassment — this was much much later, when I was administratively responsible for this business. State auditors would look at the titles of these old projects and find that they had been in force since the early days — early twenties, thirties, and forties — and say, "This is evidence that you never change. You're still working on the same problems as you were twenty or thirty years ago. We have to do something about this; we can't put up with such an obsolete, in-the-rut kind of activity." Well of course, if you just look at titles, that was the case. So I spent a good deal of my time in later years explaining to interested parties who were not inclined to want to support the agricultural research program in the first place that we really had a dynamic system that wasn't stuck in a rut. It was changing with the times. But the evidence — summarized evidence and aggregate evidence — was not very supportive of that point of view, so it was difficult to get that point across. (That's looking forward a little bit, because that leads into some of my administrative frustrations that I encountered in later years. So I inadvertantly contributed to some of my administrative problems in later years. Faculty were/are generally unsympathetic to revising projects on a timely basis, because it seems to them to be an unproductive activity. I agreed because it is primarily an administrative need and exercise.) The evolution of my activities as a plant pathologist was somewhat gradual. While I spent most of the early years setting out field plots and trying to address the solution of these problems in the field, it gradually became apparent to me that I was not making very much progress in field experimentation and that we needed to back up and look at a less complex situation. So that is when I began to become more concerned about the dynamics of an infection in more controlled situations, in the greenhouse and laboratory, to study the pathogens involved. And also the same thing for the viruses; we needed to isolate them in more pure form without so many complex complications, so we knew what we were dealing with, My interests gradually turned then into the study of epidemiology and population dynamics of the lima bean root rot, where the pathogens involved were primary Rhizoctor.ia solani, pythium ultimum, and Fusarium solani, the three maj or fungi causing foot distress in quite a number of vegetables, although the bean plant was a good host to study their actions on. 62 Lage : So you studied them in the controlled lab or greenhouse? Kendrick: We began to turn to the laboratory and the greenhouse. Lage: Was that happening in other areas of the experiment station, or just your project? Was this kind of a trend? Kendrick: I think it was a trend, although the staff of the experiment station, even those working with citrus and avocadoes and lemons and dates, were field- oriented. The experiment station, because it didn't have any teaching obligations, I think spent more time in the field with the field problems than perhaps our northern California colleagues. The activities of the experiment station people at Berkeley and Davis, at least to the extent that I followed my father and his colleagues, were also field-oriented. The gradual evolution, which I will get into a little bit later, of becoming more laboratory- and greenhouse-oriented, was really a consequence of the evolution of how you approached the solution to the problems. Establishment of the Air Pollution Research Laboratory Kendrick: One of the great digressions as far as the citrus research was concerned was the onset of air pollution damage to vegetables in southern California. John Middleton in the mid-forties had noted what he thought was air pollution damage, probably due to sulfur dioxide, in the Long Beach area with its concentration of oil extraction activities, refineries, and related industrial activities. I guess I don't know particularly what the host was, but celery was grown in that area, and it could have been some celery or lettuce on which he noticed what he felt was perhaps air pollution damage. We had another flurry in the late forties, in 1948-49, of calls into El Monte, Puente, and the Long Beach area again, and fields that seemed to be blighted. And not just in isolated areas but the whole field. We responded to that plea for help by looking at them, and finally determined that there was something in the atmosphere causing this problem. Lage: Was it a difficult realization to make, or was it so different from other types of blight — ? Kendrick: Well, what made it appear to be atmospheric was that the whole field would be affected uniformly. The nature of plant disease is such that it's rare to get all the plants in the whole field of sixty, or twenty-five, or fifteen acres affected similarly. You find pockets of disease, because of the nature of the 63 Kendrick: distribution of the organism, even with airborne fungal or bacterial blights. You don't really find all plants in the field affected to the same extent. There are pockets where it's more devastating than others. And you can trace that to the origin, where the pathogen got started — either seedborr.e or in the field or it's blown in from one section to another, so that there's a gradation of severity. But in air pollution damage, you car. look over the whole field and all plants seem to be affected similarly. You quickly come to the realization that it's something airborne and uniform. Well, we were looking for mildews and fungal spore-borne diseases, but isolations from the diseased material on the plant didn't yield anything that seemed to be pathogenic. We'd get the usual contaminants, but nothing that was very pathogenic. So without too much scratching of our heads, we suddenly realized that we had an air pollution problem, and then we began to look at the weather records to see when the first notices had come in relation to whether or not they were in the smog attacks. And at that time, in the early fifties and late forties, air pollution was beginning to become a problem in the Los Angeles, Altadena, Pasadena, El Monte region of southern California. Lage: There were already records of pollutants in the air? Kendrick: Yes. Our department had a position authorized to assist Dr. Donald Bliss, who was responsible for date diseases — date disease investigations — and Armillaria root rot of woody plants. That position was authorized to aid him in his investigation, and Dr. Ellis Darley was employed to occupy that position, but because of the severity of the air pollution damage we prevailed upon Dr. Klotz and Dr. Batchelor to allow that position to be diverted to work on the air pollution problem, because the problem needed more help than John and I were able to give it. They allowed that to happen. So Ellis Darley joined John and me in our air pollution studies. Around that time we realized that we were dealing with a photochemical reaction way beyond both John's and my training. We were interested in getting some controlled environmental chamber studies to reproduce the disease. We were also aware that Professor Fritz Went, a plant physiologist at CalTech, had developed what he called a phytotron. That was at that time, in the late forties, the ultimate in controlled environmental chamber studies. Everything inside was sterile. The only variations were the varied environments created to study plants and plant growth. One could only enter the chamber by changing clothes and dressing in a sterilized uniform, putting hats on, walking through disinfectants. It was quite an ordeal to get in and out. 64 Kendrick: So. we early collaborated with Went to set up some experiments in the phytotron at CalTech. but we needed somebody to pay attention to them, and that's where we asked Ellis Darley to join us. Ellis spent some time in Pasadena and traveled back and forth to Riverside. It became apparent that we needed to trace what we were dealing with and we were aware of the fact that a member of the biochemistry department at CalTech. was Dr. A. J. Haagen-Smit. Lage: He's mentioned in one of our other interviews as chairman of the state Air Resources Board under Governor Reagan. Kendrick: That's correct, he was. At the time — this was in the late forties, '49 — he had come to CalTech from the Hawaiian Pineapple Institute, where he had been working on the chemistry of aromatic flavors. He seemed ideal to seek help from because he knew something about volatiles and their chemical reactions. So we established a relationship with Haggy, as we called him, and engaged his interest in this air pollution problem. He's the one that really pushed us a quantum leap ahead. It was through his knowledge of aromatic aldehydes and highly unstable oxidar.t aldehydes, and their origin, that we realized we were dealing with a photochemical reaction between the hydrocarbons from gasoline and ozone in the atmosphere, which produced the ingredients causing the damage that we were noting in the fields. So, John and Ellis and I set up some fumigation chambers ir. Riverside and began trying to reproduce some of the damage we were seeing in the fields. We spent a good deal of time the next two or three years pursuing that, trying to establish some levels of concentration and exposures and conditions of predisposition that made plants susceptible, and trying to determine what plants were not susceptible to air pollution damage. We did that with the vegetables; we were not engaged with citrus and tree crop studies at that time. That ultimately led to quite an established area of research at Riverside, and ultimately to the establishment of the statewide Air Pollution Research Laboratory, which was headed and directed by John Middleton. I determined about the mid-fifties that pursuing air pollution damage was kind of a dead-end street for me. I was more interested in the pathology of plants and realized that I was not trained well enough in biochemistry and the physical chemistry required to study and solve air pollution damage. I also was not interested in just testing the reaction of plants to air pollution damage for the rest of my career. So I said to John, "You take the air pollution business, and I'll get back into vegetable pathology, and we'll both proceed happily beyond that." 65 Lage: That's very exciting to be in at the beginning of something. Was this a new field? Was this the first time that it had been studied, or did you have literature to fall back on? Kendrick: This was a new cause of air pollution damage to plants. The main literature we had to fall back on was S02 damage studies. There was a center of air pollution research in Salt Lake City and in Provo, where Moyer D. Thomas was employed by — I think it was U.S. Steel Company. U.S. Steel had a plant there. They were being sued by growers for plant damage associated with steel production. They established their own research laboratory to sort out how much damage they were responsible for, and how much was other kinds of plant damage for which they didn't have any responsibility. They were trying to partition out degrees of responsibility, so they could sort out the liability. You have to realize that the Fontana Steel Mill was in close proximity to Riverside, and they were beginning to get all kinds of claims against them. They were not a clean industry; they were emitting pollutants, pollutants you could see. There is a big difference between smoke and the kind of plant damaging pollution that comes out of a number of sources. We were becoming the experts in plant damage due to air pollution. I was not terribly comfortable with that because it was still a big guessing game as to what degree of responsibility was due to Fontana and what might be due to what was blown in from Los Angeles. The American automotive industries were not particularly accepting of their responsibility for the plant damage from gasoline and its incomplete combustion in car engines. The Stauffer Chemical Company was quite helpful to us. They provided free of charge the chambers that they had given up. They had assembled their own research in the Long Beach area when they were being pursued because of some claims about sulfur dioxide damage to plants, and they made some studies to determine what it was they could reasonably accept responsibility for. I don't know the outcome of the suit, but it was a subject of litigation. But the chambers that they gave us, and the set-up to expand them into a useful laboratory experience, really was quite a development as far as Riverside was concerned. On the basis of our studies, we determined that if we were going to do greenhouse studies for viruses or other kinds of plant studies, we could only do it if we filtered the air through activated carbon filters. This eliminated the airborne plant damaging toxicant. That also became a requirement for the phytotron in Pasadena because plants were being damaged inside the phytotron by some mysterious visitor, in spite of requiring people entering the phytotron to go through procedures to prevent contamination of the plants inside. Nevertheless something was escaping and damaging plants. 66 Kendrick: At the time we were doing those studies, Professor [Albert] Ullrich, then from the department of soils here on the Berkeley campus, was on a sabbatical leave to study environmental influences on the growth of sugar beets and sugar production. He has always indicated that we kind of came to his rescue by studying air pollution in that area and determining that they had to filter the air through the deactivated carbon filters, in order to provide an atmosphere that did not contain the oxidant that would damage plant growth. So it was kind of exciting to be in the forefront with these air pollution studies, but I was willing and happy to turn it over to the chemistry investigations. That was also my first association with Jim Pitts, who came to Riverside when the college was established. He was a professor of chemistry at the time, and his area of expertise was in physical chemistry and in photochemistry. It was natural that he would be interested in the photochemistry of reactive free radicals in the atmosphere. Sabbatical Year at Cambridge and Rothamsted Kendrick: That pretty well covers my research. I renewed my interest in soil fungi and pepper viruses which led to a sabbatical in 1961- 62 in Cambridge University, where I sought to spend some time getting refreshed in the dynamics of root pathogens. One of the pioneers of root disease studies was located at Cambridge University. He had published a book or two on the topic, and I sought to associate myself with him for a year. His name was Er. Dennis Garrett. So I applied for a fellowship from the National Science Foundation and was fortunate enough to be granted a senior postdoctoral fellowship for the year. I had also determined that I would like to spend some of the year at the Rothamsted Agricultural Experiment Station in Harpenden working with Dr. Eric Buxton. Rothamsted is in about thirty minutes from London. It is quite a famous agricultural experiment station going back several hundreds of years. It is really the agricultural experiment station in England. Lage : Somehow I think of them as being uniquely American. Kendrick: No, agricultural experiment stations as such are German. The concept that we developed in this country came from the German institutes of agriculture. They laid out these experiment stations. England augmented and exploited the idea, but some of 67 Kendrick: the early work was done in soil chemistry — chemistry of fertilizers. The Rothamsted Experiment Station has a famous field experiment in which they have had the same regime of fertilizers and cropping practices for over two hundred years. It provides a valuable data base for what will happen, and it's produced a lot of information. The time at Cambridge proved to be somewhat of a disappointing experience as far as my research plans were concerned, because when I found what facilities were available to study population dynamics of Rhisoctonia rising and falling under various kinds of regimes, I found that they didn't have the facilities to study in any kind of a statistical way the problem that I had outlined. I made these arrangements by letter to begin with, and was somewhat misled by Garrett. Although he was a marvelous person to discuss things with, I found that his experiments were pretty well confined to his laboratory bench with one or two plants from which he'd make all his observations and draw quite inclusive conclusions. The same characteristic existed with his greenhouse experiments. I was accustomed to setting up three to four hundred petri dish plates and make readings to get some kind of comfortable statistical feeling of occurrences or nonoccurrences of the organisms that I was studying. I found that if I used 400 petri dishes in this laboratory, I'd use up the whole week's supply for the entire department. [laughter] So I had to readjust my expectations relative to the kind of study I could make, and I found that what I gained most from that experience of nine months was an exposure to the kind of analytical thought process of the Cambridge scientist and the companionship of the research students who were a part of that botany department. Plant pathology was not a department at Cambridge; it was part of the botany department. Our family formed a very close personal relationship with three advanced graduate students during that period. I really cherish those relationships, one of which we carry on pretty closely even today — the Robert Witbread family. They are in Wales. He is a member of the University of Wales, located at Bangor. There were three of these young men (Bob Witbread, David Punter and Roger Waistie), who were not married at the time, and they ultimately became more than j ust acquaintances because they looked after us. Through them we experienced university life in Cambridge in all its broad aspects, and they experienced American family life in our home. (It was at least what we called home, and what the English call a semi-detached duplex, which was two dwellings with a common wall. That's why it was semi-detached. Detached on three sides, but with a common wall in the center.) 68 Kendrick: They would come to our home periodically to visit, to have meals, and we'd travel some together. That was an unheard of opportunity for English students because with their own research advisors at Cambridge, the relationship between the advisor and his student was very formal and somewhat distant. We, being the visiting Americans, were much more informal, and there was less of a gulf between teacher and student. David Punter is now in Canada at the University of Toronto, and Roger Waistie is back in England at an experiment station near Scotland after a number of years at a research station ir. Indonesia. It may actually be in Scotland. This was quite an impressionable year. It gave me renewed confidence and experience in dealing with soil-borne fungal pathogens, and I came home from that experience with the feeling that I was really going to get into the population dynamics of root-rotting organisms that were borne in the soil. This was kind of an expanding field at the time. I also had a similar experience of stimulation in Harpenden at the Rothamsted Experiment Station. The thing I was appreciative of ir. that opportunity was that it placed me in the company of stimulating minds. We didn't always talk shop, and the topics ranged from foreign policy to politics and sports. At Cambridge, through another contact I had from Riverside in the chemistry departnent, I was introduced to a physical chemist (Howard Purnell) who was a fellow at Trinity Hall, Cambridge. He arranged to have me accepted as a visiting fellow at Trinity Hall, which gave me the opportunity to experience some Cambridge college life such as dining at the high table with the fellows, and having conversation and sherry or port in the commons room with the fellows after dinner. I could easily understand how that stratified life of Cambridge and Oxford perpetuates itself, because it is a very pampered life for the faculty who are "in," but not necessarily so for those who are students. A lasting experience for me was that I was often challenged to explain American foreign policy or American attitudes. I was the only American who was a fellow at this small college at that time. Trinity Hall was primarily oriented towards the field of law. The master of the college had had something to do with writing the constitution of several of the former colonies of England. So the American really was fair game for a lot of challenges — not necessarily criticism, and I at least was asked to explain and justify the stance of the United States government. I felt at times like I was defending something I didn't have my heart into. Lage : Sounds like an unfair advantage, with all these people schooled in the 1 aw. 69 Kendrick: That's true, but as I reflected back on those encounters, it was a great experience, because I'm not really comfortable just being a passive observer of current events, and I'm not shy about debating a point wtih somebody, particularly if I've got the knowledge and a basis to support the argument. Then, when I went to Harpenden. to Rothamsted, I was thrown in amongst another group of challenging people. We used to have lunch together, brown-bagging it, either at a local pub in Harpenden or else in the laboratory. My experience there occurred during the period of the Bay of Pigs. The English were very critical of the United States action in the Bay of Pigs, particularly in remembering how their attempt at controlling the Suez Canal early on was condemned by the United States, as an act of unf or give able ness. They wondered how come we (the United States) had a double standard. Well, defending the Bay of Pigs was not very easy to do, particularly since I didn't know anything about it. Lage: I've heard other people say that they were put into that defensive position, whereas if you were here, you might be leading the criticism. Kendrick: That's quite correct. But it placed me in a position of the lawyer who has to defend someone because they come to you and you know they're guilty but you've got to see that their rights are protected, and not condemned through prejudice. But we hit it off quite well. When I finished my leave there, my colleagues at Rothamsted gave me a hand-written pictorial scroll that was described as an honorary degree in debating. [laughter] I've got it hanging in the other room. I thought it was a nice tribute. They respected me for defending things that were almost indefensible and admired the fact that I could hold my own — they were all graduates of Cambridge or Oxford, with no lack of ability to engage in that kind of debate. Lage: Where did all this social life leave your wife, or did she have a stock in all this? Sounds very male. Kendrick: You're quite right; it was very male. England then was very male. Our children were nine and eleven, and we were determined that we would have them experience the English school system. Janet was the eleven-year-old, and Douglas was the nine-year-old. Evelyn spent most of her time taking care of shopping, and being sure that she was there when the children needed her. The period when I was in Rothamsted, which was the last three months of our stay in England, we did not want to change schools for that time. So we left her in Cambridge and I took our little right-hand drive Opel (and a right-hand driving country is a thrill in itself). I would go down on a Monday morning and come back on a Friday 70 Kendrick: afternoon. And while at Rothamsted, I stayed in what they called the Manor House. Rothamsted really was an expansion of an old estate, a major estate. The Manor House was the original owner's home, and it was quite a large home. It had been modified to take care of visitors who were there for periods of time. I was fortunate enough to get a room for the three months that I was at Rothamsted. That also provided another opportunity to become acquainted with visiting West Indians, Australians and Jamaicans. Rothamsted was a magnet for visitors from all over the world who would come through and want to see the renowned staff of the experiment sta tion, as well as some of the famous plots. It has an illustrious — good history of early work in the agricultural research field. One of the things I remember not too fondly are the meals that we had at Rothamsted. Evelyn will remind me of this every time we have brussels sprouts. I was there during the winter period, during the season when brussels sprouts seemed to be forever available, and they prepared brussels sprouts in the Manor House kitchen by boiling them for what seemed to be most of the day, before serving them at the evening meal. They were absolutely awful. It was the principal vegetable. Brussels sprouts and boiled potatoes. It was not a menu that I remember with any degree of fondness. On the other hand, the meals at Trinity Hall were quite good. These graduate students I referred to earlier saw to it that we went to the college events, the parties, which had a lot of tradition associated with them. The school terms I never could get sorted out exactly correctly. At the start of my leave, we arrived in March and discovered that the term was ending and there was going to be about a three-week recess, when everybody disappeared. That period was going to be a waste of time, so we quickly changed our plans and went touring on the continent for three weeks. We did France and Italy and Austria. The students advised us of some places to visit, which we appreciated. We really felt quite fortunate — we'd pop in and out of places and did our own tour, in our little Opel with the four of us. We had quite an enjoyable three weeks and saw a lot of places that are now commonplace stops on most organized tours. Later in the year in October we took another three-week sojourn onto the continent, and we did the northern half of western Europe. We visited Sweden, Denmark, northern Germany, and Holland at that period. And that was a delightful time of the year, too. In both instances, we were able to travel with not too much congestion from other people, so we didn't really plan a lot ahead for our accomodations, we just stopped when we were ready to stop, although we did do some degree of planning so we wouldn't be stranded. 71 Kendrick: That gave us a good appreciation for that part of Europe and flavored the whole year. We saw a lot of cathedrals, and during the period that we were in England we traveled fairly extensively on weekends, to cover that country. We got into Wales and to Scotland and saw cathedrals and manor houses and were well exposed to the magnificent art. We didn't pass up many art galleries. I think we gained an appreciation of the exquisite nature of the original paintings. Both Evelyn and I had had the usual exposure to art history in grade school by looking at the pictures in books. But there is nothing that will impress you as much as seeing an original. I think that really kind of turned us on in that area. The kids were a little impatient with us; they were zipping in and out of the Louvre when we were there. Their primary stop was a souvenir stand. [laughs] I could hardly drag them away from a souvenir stand in Pisa. I wanted to go up the Leaning Tower, and they wanted to buy something. Lage: Typical, that hasn't changed. Kendrick: No. But that sabbatical was really a mind-clearer. I had gotten so involved with campus committees and one thing and another that I needed a separation from all of that business. I really came back all charged up to become a good plant pathologist, and quickly got diverted. But we'll get into that. That sabbatical, it turns out, and subsequently the work engaged in after returning was about the end of my research career. In 1963, I became chairman of the department. (We'll back up a bit, and get into that a little bit later.) As chairman of the department — it was a fairly large department and it was undergoing expansion and growth — I found an increasing demand on my time to engage in administrative matters and campus affairs. While I attempted to carry on research programs with research assistants, I really knew that I was fighting a losing game. Ultimately, I just gave in and let the research slide. But it was not planned that way. I wanted to comment on one of the major research efforts that I engaged in prior to going on the sabbatical leave. It was done in the Imperial Valley where I was pursuing the problem of cantaloupe crown blight. Working rather closely with a biochemist, a colleague of mine (Randy Wedding), put us into the field a good deal of time. We had quite extensive field plots, trying to uncover the fate of root development and root destruction under a variety of different treatments — water regimes, varietal differ ences. That was not a very fruitful piece of research. We accumu lated a lot of data, but were never able to come to any real conclusion as to what the cause was, and ultimately we decided it was another one of those complexes that we needed to unravel. 72 Promoting Riverside Faculty Unity and Camaraderie Kendrick: During my early years at Riverside, the department of plant pathology was physically dispersed among four different buildings. This made it difficult to operate as a department because there wasn't enough in common to bring us together. I can't remember ever having a staff meeting, or any kind of event that was departmental-oriented, except when we would gather at the KLotzes' house once in a while for socials and conversation. Dr. and Mrs. KLotz were good about that; they kept that part of the operation going pretty well. But in a professional sense, there was nothing that brought it together. It was not until 1954, when Webber Hall was built and we were able to bring the department under one roof in one central location, that we began to feel a little bit more like a unit with a common purpose, and not a dispersed group of individuals. The first place I was housed was in the soil science department in Riverside, across the hall from Dan Aldrich. That began another association which had a decided influence on my outlook and activities. That was not my first association with Dan, because we were in Professor Benjamin Dugger's plant physiology course at the University of Wisconsin, as I have indicated. But Dan had finished earlier and had come out to join the Riverside Citrus Experiment Station in about 1944. Let me interject here that, although the department did not have any kind of common focus, the Citrus Experiment Station did. It had a major event which as I look back on it appeared to be created by a stroke of genius. It brought this large family together and provided an opportunity to at least develop for those of us who were really a part of that early staff, some esprit de corps in terms of being a part of the Citrus Experiment Station, and allowed us to overcome the feeling of isolation from the university which the physical location promoted. And that focus was a regular meeting of what was called the Synapsis Club. The origin of that term is genetic and means "coming together." It describes one of the phases of cell division and cell multiplication, and represents what happens in the nucleus with the chromosomes, they come together before they are split apart. I don't know who to give credit for that naire because by 1947 it seemed to be already a well-established meeting of members of the staff and outsiders who wanted to come. There was always a single speaker, who would describe some work activity that he or she was doing. It was pretty well attended, and you were sort of expected to go to a Synapsis Club meeting. At least if you were absent, your absence was noted and you were asked, "Well, how come you weren't at the Synapsis Club?" 73 Lage: And how often did this take place? Sendrick: I think it was once a month. I don't think it was any more often than that. It certainly was not once a week. But that event was really I think rather important to the unification of the Experiment Station and provided at least a means of getting acquainted with other than your immediate colleagues. There was a certain amount of socializing through the Campus CLub. The Campus Club was really run by the spouses. Lage: When you mention the Campus CLub, are you talking about the period after the College of Letters and Science was established? Kendrick: No. The campus club was there before. I don't know when it first started, but it was in existence when we arrived. It was an activity that the wives encouraged, and they were instrumental in developing Christmas parties and summer picnics. I wanted to talk about my association with Dan Aldrich, who was located right across the hallway from the laboratory which I shared with Henry Schneider, also a plant pathologist — the twc of us were in the soils department building. The fact that both Dan and I had been at Wisconsin briefly together led us naturally into an early association, but he was hard to miss anyway — friendly, vigorous, and active, just a natural leader, as his subsequent career at the University demonstrated.* We found commonality in our families and social life. Evelyn and I did not have any children at the time; the Aldrichs were just starting their family; the Middletons had part of their family. The Zentmyers, I believe, had their family started at the time we first met them. At any rate, in a social sense the Middletons, Zentmyers, Aldriches, and Kendricks became a social group who would get together at Thanksgiving and at other times of the year. So aside from being professional colleagues, our families enjoyed each other and participated together in social events. The expansion of the Citrus Experiment Station brought to the staff younger people who felt that they needed more activity than just horseshoes at noontime. Lage: Al Boyce talks about the horseshoe game. * Aldrich went on to become chairman of the Department of Soils and Plant Nutrition, Davis and Berkeley; University Dean of Agriculture; Chancellor of the University of California, Irvine; and Acting Chancellor of the Riverside and Santa Barbara campuses. 74 Kendrick: Yes. It became quite an ongoing game, I'll tell you. I participated myself a few times, but I was never in it with those old guys who could toss ringers all the time. But we determined that we really needed a faculty club. And Dan Aldrich was a principal mover. Nothing stood in his way of contacting anybody. If he needed to call Dr. Wellman or Dean Hutchison or Bob Underbill or whomever, it was just a phone call as far as he was concerned. L. C. Cochran — who was with the USDA, and another plant pathologist at Riverside joined in helping this movement. As a graduate student, Cochran was acquainted with my father at Purdue. It's a small world when you are dealing with people more or less in the same profession. L. C., as we referred to him, was placed by the USDA in the Department of Plant Pathology at Riverside to pay attention to stone-fruit trees and their diseases. Ultimately, he spent a good deal of his time with viruses of stone fruits. But L. C. had also determined that we needed the physical presence of a faculty club. So L. C., Dan and I, and the others — George Zentmyer, John Middleton — conceived of developing a faculty clubhouse. To obtain the capital for its development we sold bonds to ourselves and the CES staff. We located a building at Camp Haan which was available as an army surplus building. It had been a nurses' recreation building, with the usual single-story barracks-type architecture. Camp Haan was located across the highway from March Air Force Base, about five miles from the Citrus Experiment Station. We determined that if we could get that building moved onto some spot on the Riverside campus property, that we would have a physical structure, which we could put together and convert into a clubhouse. But we needed permission from the Regents to do that sort of thing. That's how Aldrich became a prime mover in contacting the secretary of the Board of Regents, who was Bob Underbill at the time, and getting support from the local administration plus Dean Hutchison, who was in Berkeley. Dan carried that out with tenacity and effectiveness. When the administration discovered that we were really serious about doing this sort of thing and had raised the coney to buy the building, they said — I don't know who "they" were, really — but they said they would allow us to develop that building if there would be an auditorium in it, because the CES needed some expanded meeting space. The smaller auditorium in the main Citrus Experiment Station building where we were holding the Synapsis Club meetings was needed for office space expansion — so the administration said that if we would allow them to have some meeting space in the reconstructed building, they would help us move and relocate it in a more convenient place than originally planned. We saw a bargain in the making, and we accepted the agreement. 75 Kendrick: So the present location of what is now called the University dub is located centrally on the campus just north of the soils building. Well, we arranged to have it moved by a moving company; it had to come in in five different sections, moved down the highway. The University agreed to pay for the construction of the new foundation, which was performed professionally. After the sections were lowered onto the new foundation, the staff of the experiment station proceeded then to put it back together. We'd have work parties to do that in our spare time. We had some technical help on how to connect things and how to get the wiring done right by the local maintenance man, Henry Meyer, whom Boyce referred to in his book. He was really the prime professional advisor on this project. But all the manual labor, the hammering and the sawing and the like, were provided by the staff on work parties primarily on weekends and after working hours. We put it back together again. We determined that we needed a fireplace, so we bought a large iron heatilator and surrounded it with a lot of concrete and granite from the western part of Riverside County. The heatilator provided the correct drafting which a fireplace should have. This fireplace is a monument to perpetuity because we put so much granite and cement into it that I expect it will be there almost forever. Lage: They'll never move it again. Kendrick: Because Aldrich was close by — he lived just across the highway from the experiment station and I was without family — we found that the two of us from time to time would be the only ones out there during a Saturday work schedule. We've been identified as the ultimate architects, or workhorses, who put that fireplace together. One Saturday, we were trying to lay brick for the chimney on the roof, and we were having difficulty lining it up in a perpendicular way. The chimney began to lean a little bit. Lage: [laughing] The leaning tower of Pisa. Kendrick: And the more we tried to straighten it out, the more it leaned. We tried to adjust for the amount of mortar we were putting in between the bricks. And finally, it was so frustrating that we stopped and Dan said, "Look, we're getting nowhere. I have a friend who's a bricklayer. Why don't we ask him to finish this off?" I said, "That's the best idea I've heard yet, Dan. Let's do that. Let's stop this nonsense because if we're not careful, it will just crumble on us." 76 Kendrick: So that was what happened, and to this day you can see where we left off and a professional took off, because the chimney goes up at an angle and then it all of a sudden straightens out. It was finished off in a great way. Another thing we did for which I have a lot of fond memories is that we formed a vocal quartet. Our social events in the experiment station were self-motivated, and entertainment was provided by our own participation. The chairman of the soils department was Homer Chapman, who put himself through school with a little dance band for which he was the piano player, playing by ear. He could play almost anything that somebody would hum to him, or for which he had some kind of a notion of what the melody was. He put all kinds of chords to the melody — he was a marvelous piano player. He's still living. So he was our accompanist. Another colleague, a man in plant pathology, Merrill Wallace, had the talent of rhyming almost any subject. (Merrill was our principal lyricist of our original songs.) So many of our songs were parodies of known events and people. This quartet kind of got thrown together with no planning — it just sort of happened. It consisted of Aldrich, Zentmyer, Bob Harding, now deceased and a colleague of Dan Aldrich's in soils — and me. Zentmyer was a quite capable baritone, could harmonize easily; I sang second tenor and had choral experience and knew a little bit about harmonizing around a tune; Aldrich was not very musically inclined but he could carry a melody so we said, "Dan, you sing the melody. Don't worry about us, we'll harmonize around you;" and Bob Harding had a good bass voice, knew quite a bit about harmony, and could hold his own. So because the three of us knew a little bit about and could read music, and had choral experience, we just let Dan sort of free-wheel it. Lage: He sounds like he was good at that. Kendrick: He was fairly adept at it. And surprisingly, we sounded pretty good, especially if we could get Homer Chapman playing loudly on the piano and covering up mistakes. We also made up for musical deficiencies by appearing in costume, so we would — depending on the subject matter — get up in some outlandish costumes, and divert people's attention from the choral niceties by the words, which were usually appropriately composed by Merrill. Then we began to branch out. We appeared to be having so much fun singing that we were asked to appear at Christmas affairs, or lead the Cal fight song in choral groups, or student groups, or at Charter Day banquets and the like. We sort of became known as the Faculty Four Plus One, at a number of events which were scheduled in town. 77 Kendrick: To augment the original parodies, we tried to seek out little ballads which were not common or well known. Besides these we liked to sing the famous Yale Whiffenpoof Song, which was really beyond our capacity level, although we finally became pretty good at it. We sang a little ditty that came out of a book of folk songs, probably of English origin, called "No More Booze." Our repertoire also included "Careless Love," "Cruising Down the River," and the usual, other barbershop quartet songs that were easy to harmonize. Our ultimate experience with this sort of thing occurred at a fundraiser put on by the Junior Aid of Riverside, the forerunner of the Junior League of Riverside, at an event in that city. The Junior Aid engaged a producing company in New York to come out and produce a follies in which the local talent was used in a whole array of single episodes involving duets and songs, comedy skits and chorus lines. The Junior Aid follies needed a quartet. So Dan's wife, Jean, who was a member of the organization at that time, said, "Well, why don't you get your quartet down there and try out for this sort of thing?" Well, we said, "Sure, we'll try out," and we did, and were selected. So for two years running, we appeared in the Junior Aid Follies in the municipal auditorium in Riverside, which for two nights running had about 1,200 people in attendance. Lage: This was big time! Kendrick: It was big time, and we figured we couldn't top that, so we just stopped appearing after that. [laughter] Lage: Are you the group that Boyce refers to as teaching the new undergraduates the various Cal songs? Kendrick: Yes. That actually was in the Boyce book, but it is in Dan Aldrich's account of the development of Riverside — yes, that's the group. But we did have a lot of fun, and I think that the reason that it stands out in my memory is because of the success of those events where your colleagues see you in a different role than you're usually performing. I think the success of the Faculty (Hub Christmas party here at Berkeley is due to the fact that it's a faculty-participation event, and the more you get away from the self-developed capacity to entertain yourself, and replace it with professional entertainment, the more you lose faculty unity. All of those events promoted this kind of faculty unity and camaraderie that were important in setting a tone of unity beyond your department and your own special interests. 78 Lage: Now what time period are we talking about? When was the Faculty dub built? Kendrick: We built that about 1949. Dan left Riverside in the early fifties to move to Davis, to become the department chair there, so all of this was in the late forties and early fifties. Research Studies in Plant Pathology at the Citrus Experiment Station in Riverside. • Jim Kendrick and John Middleton in Chula Vista celery field, 1949. Virus studies, 1952, Smog chamber studies, 1953. Left to right: Middleton, Kendrick, Ellis Darley. 79 IV TRAININ3 GROUND FOR A UNIVERSITY ADMINISTRATOR: RIVERSIDE CAMPUS GOVERNANCE Establishment of the Undergraduate Liberal Arts College [Interview 4: September 17, 1987] //# Lage : Today is September 17, and our fourth interview. We're going to continue with the University of California at Riverside today. Kendrick: The other things besides research that engage and occupy a faculty person's time are the committees and special assignments. Being a person who, at least, is not reluctant to participate in committees of one kind or another, I naturally became involved with departmental committees and the like. Those are fairly minor; they just give you a flavor of learning to operate in a collective sense and addressing issues that affect more than yourself. The real change in these kinds of activity was really associated with talk about expanding Riverside from an experiment station into a teaching college. So the latter part of the 1940s was when the expansion, potential expansion, of an undergraduate teaching program came into being at Riverside. Lage: It was talked about that soon, back in the postwar years? Kendrick: Yes, in the late forties, '49, '50. As a matter of fact, Provost [Gordon] Watkins was appointed to chair a committee that was studying the potential establishment of an undergraduate teaching program in the southland. Ultimately, the Citizens' University Committee — a committee that came out of the Riverside Chamber of Commerce, composed of interested Riverside citizens — was instrumental in persuading the Regents that the Riverside campus was a likely spot to locate one of the teaching campuses of the University. At the time of the activity of the Citizens' University Committee, one of the important members of that group was Philip L. Boyd, who was a businessman and a former 80 Kendrick: assemblyman representing Palm Springs and surrounding area. He was a property developer and investment advisor. Phil Boyd was later appointed to the Board of Regents and served effectively for about twelve or fourteen years. But he, like his colleagues who were citizens of the community, felt that Riverside had the space to accommodate an undergraduate college, and he was quite active in trying to persuade not only the legislature but the Regents of the University and the administration that that was an obvious place to expand the University's offering to undergraduate education. That was the period, too, when the University, during the latter part of Robert Gordon Sproul's presidency and under succeeding President dark Kerr, was planning for rapid expansion. As I recall, during the very early fifties when all of this talk about the potential expansion into a teaching campus was going on, there were mixed feelings among the experiment station personnel about whether or not that would be such a good idea or not. I had described earlier that it was a fairly comfortable research environment. There was not much to interfere with working on the problems in which you were engaged. Scheduling field experimentation was not complicated by other demands on your time, and therefore the experiment station staff had a lot of field experimentation underway. With the decision by the Regents that the Riverside campus would indeed become the site of a college of letters and science, things began to change. In the very early fifties, Provost Watkins, Gordon Watkins, who I think at the time was dean of the College of Letters and Science at UCLA, was appointed provost of this new fledgling college. He moved to Riverside to begin to assemble the faculty and leaders of the various segments of this new college. A number of things began to happen. Facilities had to be built for the new college and a wholly new faculty had to be recruited and assembled. All of that took time. So the influence of that activity was not all that obvious to those of us who were relatively young in our associations with the University, but nevertheless it had an impact. Lage: It didn't affect most of you as far as taking on a teaching obligation? Kendrick: No, because we were not going to be teaching undergraduates. The program design of the undergraduate program under Watkins1 s leadership was to be a small liberal-arts offering, patterned much like the Swarthmore of the West or Reed College. It was going to be essentially an elite, small, intimate undergraduate letters and science offering. They did not envision having a graduate program at all. 81 Kendrick: So the four or five people who were employed by the University under Watkins's direction assembled their faculty with the same kind of expectations in mind. You want to recall that simultaneously the Davis campus was declared also to be the site of another college of letters and science. The same was to happen at San Diego, which had been the location for a long time of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography's long and illustrious activity with the University of California. It had a little more graduate training involvement, but it did not have an undergraduate program. So the three campuses were being developed as undergraduate letters and science teaching campuses along about the same time. Santa Cruz and Irvine came on slightly later, but not much. It was a great period of expansion for the University of California. Everyone involved previously with the University was not without some effect of that expansion. I recall that my own view about the likelihood of developing an undergraduate program at Riverside was one of approval and enthusiasm. I felt that it would bring a challenge to the environment and introduce a broader life of the University than we were experiencing as kind of an outpost of the University. Part of that, I think, was a holdover of my memories of going to Davis and seeing a full-fledged campus, even though it was an agriculture campus, and my experience at the University of Wisconsin, plus the fact that I had done my undergraduate work at Berkeley, although agriculture was a very small part of the campus. So I viewed the expansion into liberal arts with some degree of enthusiasm. In reflection, I think that there was some over— expectation, but nevertheless we'll get into that a little bit later. Lage: Kendrick: The undergraduate college at Riverside was to be developed within four principal divisions: Ed Coman, the librarian and a member of the team of planners, was employed early to begin assembling a library; a division head for the physical sciences was appointed, Conway Pierce; the life science program was to be an integrated program and Herman Spieth was identified as the leader for that; the humanities area was to be put together by John Olmsted; and the social science program was to be put together by Arthur Turner. Overall, with the dean of the college, who was Robert Nisbet, they became the principal architects of the faculty that was assembled for the college. Were they all drawn from the University of California? No. Herman Spieth came from New York, I think the City College of New York. Conway Pierce came from Pomona; Robert Nisbet came from Berkeley; John Olmsted, I think, from UCLA, I'm not sure. 82 Kendrick: Arthur Turner was a Scotchman, and I don't really know where he came from. There was also a physical education component, and Jack Hewitt was asked to develop that program. Those men were mature, well-established professionals, and they had an opportunity to become pretty well acquainted with the existing experiment station staff. They participated socially and were incorporated into the life of the campus at the time. Provost Watkins was a very charming person, and his wife, Anna, was quickly accepted by the community as a great asset, as he was. He explained in very articulate terms what he had in mind to provide a wonderful experience of undergraduate education. The space that was assigned for these people to operate in was an abandoned chicken coop up near the original director's residence, so they operated under very Spartan circumstances. But they proceeded, nevertheless, to develop the concept that was well-meaning, but probably, in retrospect, did not have much of a chance to succeed with the University's overall program. The New Academics; Relations with Agricultural Researchers and The Riverside Community Kendrick: They did set the pattern for liberal arts education at the University of California, Riverside, that has some residues even today. The faculty that was assembled by them in these four major undergraduate offerings for the most part were assistant professors. They did not really plan to set their faculties in motion by recruiting professors, associate professors and assistant professors with an age spread so that there would be varying representations of maturity and experience. So what we had in those initial stages was a prominence of beginning professionals in various fields associated with the liberal arts and the physical and life sciences all assembled with the expectation that they were going to offer a very demanding and comprehensive liberal arts education at the undergraduate level. You can imagine — maybe you can't — that that group of young professionals arriving on a campus where there was a well- established agricultural component of faculty and staff, mixed about as well as oil and water. The agriculture program was regarded by these young idealists in the liberal arts as less than worthy of a rigorous academic program, and on the contrary, the attitude of a great many of the agricultural experiment station people was that these new assistant professors really didn't know what life was all about, and that they lived in a dream world. They didn't mind criticizing established institutions, and this caused a certain amount of stir in the 83 Ker.drick: community. They were questioning the establishment, so to speak. Therefore, an academic tension really developed, not unlike the traditional distance between the sciences and the humanities as it exists or. almost any general university campus. But in addition, because it was an agricultural group on the one hand, all well established, and these — Lage : And the difference in ages between the two groups played a role? Kendrick: That's right, age did make a difference. Also the fact that this new teaching activity had invaded some experiment station land created a tension between two factions of the campus. Although this is, I think, a fair description of the whole, it certainly is not an adequate description of individual relationships, because some of us were able to see the value of social science and humanities in education and were willing to accept the notion that others had a point of view that they were justified in expressing. And that, in the long run, it would be in the best interests of the development of the University's offering on the campus to have a broadened program, although it did interfere with the sort of single-minded dedication to research that was aimed primarily in solving the citrus and subtropical problems of southern California. With the program which got underway formally with students in 1953, a benefit for the experiment station — a tangible benefit — was that Webber Hall was built. It provided for the first time adequate physical space for the department of plant pathology. It also provided space for the department of nematology, and what was then called plant biochemistry. Lage: So the experiment station was departmentalized, but the college was organized by divisions? Kendrick: That's right. The philosophy of that early college instruction was an integrated education. It was illustrated by the fact that the concept of an undergraduate education was not to be compartmentalized; it was to be broad exposure to western civilization and the arts and the social sciences, with a flavor of the life and physical sciences and the humanities. For example, there was no department of botany, and no department of zoology or psychology. It was a division of life sciences, with those components a part of it. Every undergraduate student had to take a course in western civilization, I believe it was called. It was basically a humanities course, which was team- taught, but led by a couple of humanists. It was really a killer of a course because students were expected to cover a massive amount of material associated with western civilization or the 84 Kendrick: development of western civilization in general. It included the languages, as well as the cultural aspects and the political and social structures. It's interesting that today's reemphasis on undergraduate education is restoring the place of humanities and social studies in general education curricula. I think that to some extent it was too bad that that experiment at Riverside failed. I understand, however, that we just could not sustain the kind of elitist education for a relatively small segment of students. Lage: Why do you call it elitist? Kendrick: Well, not financially elitist, but intellectually elitist. The expectation of performance was really at the top of the grading scale. The workload piled onto the students was massive. You can imagine that new graduates, professionals, particularly assistant professors, having finished their education in places like Reed and Swarthmore and maybe Berkeley and UCLA and elsewhere, designed their courses with a very strict yardstick for performance. So that Riverside developed an early reputation as a tough place to get through. So the elitist reference that I'm making is not economic, but intellectual elitism strong in culture, philosophy and thoughtful ness, but short on what you really call a practical education by which to make a living. That may be stretching the term "elitism" a little more than it should be, but it certainly was an education for the few and not the general. One of our most famous early undergraduate students was Charles Young [chancellor at UCLA], who was a member of the first graduating class. He certainly does not prove my point, however. He transferred to UCLA and majored in political science as a graduate student — a "practical" education in one sense of the term. Fa c ul ty Organization in an Academic Senate Kendrick: Well, I already made reference to the fact that physically the plant pathologists, biochemists, and nematologists were much better off by having that college come to town because we got a modern building with adequate space in which to function. That was quite a significant benefit as far as we were concerned. The intangible development of this program meant that there had to be some kind of a faculty organization, so that the Academic Senate began to form, with all of its committee structure and apparati that went along with that. 85 Lage: Ker.drick: Lage : Ken d rick ; It strikes me that having all these young faculty members would be very difficult in terms of university governance, their not having had experience with an academic senate model and faculty committees. You would have thought so, but they quickly acclimated themselves to a self-governance posture. [laughs] And quickly they became typical academic participants in that structure. Even though it was small, it was easy to know most of the people who were the faculty. And they gradually began to put together the standard committees on educational policy, courses, budget, welfare, etc. Lage: Ken d rick : And the experiment station was a part of this? The Not initially. That's a subject for another small chapter, experiment station appointees, except for the chairs of the various departments, were not members of the Academic Senate. They did not have professorial titles. I mentioned that my initial appointment was as a junior plant pathologist. The title "junior" was comparable to an instructor rank at that time. The next step up was assistant plant pathologist, which was comparable to an assistant professor, and so on. H The heads of experiment station departments were granted professional titles because there needed to be some academic professorial oversight for the occasional graduate student who was farmed out, so to speak, from Berkeley, UCLA, or Davis to finish off a thesis program in residence at Riverside. So there was a j ustif ication for a professorial representation of the department, and that usually was a part of the chair's responsibility. So the department chairs took on a teaching role. That's correct. And those chairs participated in the senate development. You remember that I indicated that the bulk of the faculty in the College of Letters and Science were young assistant professors just starting out in their professional careers. The majority of our chairs of the experiment station departments were old hands, experienced in [laughs] life and their profession. So there was some built-in conflicts of points of view. The zealous enforcement of rigorous academic contributions and original work held by the letters and science faculty was not exactly compatible with what the experiment station leadership felt was the proper contributions from their research programs, because a lot of research was field-oriented and of practical nature. So there was room for disagreement on justification of 86 Kendrick: advancements. I'm just talking about things in general, not any specific cases that I remember, but I want to lay the foundation of what led to much of the conflict between personnel in the CES and the college. The mixing of a small liberal-arts undergraduate offering with an established agricultural experiment station program sounded like a good idea to the citizens of the city and to the administration as they needed tc advance and expand the offerings of the University, but it was not anything more than a shotgun marriage as far as the people who were engaged in this were concerned. And it's important to realize that because that element of disagreement between the early liberal-arts faculty, some of whom are still at Riverside, and the experiment station personnel, some of whom are also still active at Riverside, continues to exist even today. As the campus grows in size I expect this conflict to become only a memory. Lage : Are there more experiment station people now involved in teaching? Kendrick: Well, yes. And most of the experiment station people have academic titles. A lot of the young faculty who were assembled in the liberal letters and science department have gone to other places. There has been a change, but I could still feel the tensions of trying to marry a liberal arts activity with a very practical experiment station program when I was vice president. Lage: Well, it also seems to go on in the Berkeley campus. Henry Vaux talked about problems getting the Academic Senate budget committee to recognize the practical needs of the School of Forestry as they chose their professors.* Kendrick: Absolutely. That's very true. I think it's sort of built into the academic traditions of a campus that has professional school offerings as well as the letters and science and liberal arts education. I think it's unfortunate, but you find that extremism exists. I call it academic snobbery — expressed symbolically by the following bit of academic folklore: "What I'm doing is basic research, but what you're doing is applied research." That attitude comes to the foreground every once in a while. And it gets expressed in peer evaluations, particularly if you are operating (as you've said Henry has described it) in a budget committee where the representation on a small committee is usually overbalanced by academic peers from letters and science versus the practical subject matter departments. Well, all that existed at Riverside also. * Henry J. Vaux, Forestry in the Public I?-terest; Education. Economics, State Policy. 1933-1983. 1987. 87 Development of a Graduate Program Kendrick: Another thing happened that was important in the development of the Riverside campus, which changed things. While the early years of the letters and science, liberal-arts education was steaming along in pretty good shape, there was an undercurrent of unhappiness developing with the program in the physical sciences, particularly in chemistry and physics, under Conway Pierce. The unhappiness stemmed from being limited to only undergraduate education. In the sciences they realized that they had to have laboratory research to publish in reputable publications, in order for them to advance. To do this research, they needed help; they needed assistants. At the experiment station at Riverside we needed assistants too; we couldn't do everything ourselves. So our resources were invested by and large in what we would call laboratory technicians. They are today referred to as SRAs, scientific research assistants. So it became the expected pattern for researchers at the CES at Riverside to have resources not only for our own salaries, but also for travel and equipment and other supplies and expenses. Each member of the experiment station located at Riverside had a minimum of one technician and some of us had one and a half, two, or more. So we had essentially a mini-research laboratory or staff. On those campuses with undergraduate and graduate education, those resources went into research assistants, and those positions were occupied primarily by graduate students. So those support funds contributed to teaching. That was a major difference in the way Riverside used its support for research, in contrast to Davis and Berkeley, which also had components of the experiment station where their resources for the most part went into graduate programs with a minimum number of technical assistants. Well, coming back to the physical sciences, they looked with envy at all the lab assistants we had on experiment station funds for our research. They [the physical scientists] developed as best they could an undergraduate research opportunity, which was a marvelous teaching technique. The advanced undergraduates were able to get a little bit of money and, at the same time, help a senior professor with a research program, and get introduced to that kind of activity. It was not only a great teaching aid but it was also a stepping stone for their own education and further development. But that kind of assistance was not really enough to satisfy the demand of the faculty in the physical sciences. So, with the help of the life science group, they moved to establish a graduate program at Riverside. That was the first leak in the dam, as far as a small, undergraduate, exclusively liberal arts education was concerned. 88 Kendrick: They were helped in their efforts by those of us in the experiment station who felt that we also would enhance our own program by broadening it and elevating its quality by having graduate programs in the agricultural sciences that were represented at Riverside. So ultimately, that change was made, and a graduate division was established at Riverside. The first graduate dean, as I recall, was Ralph March, who was a professor of entomology. Lage: Was he part of the experiment station? Kendrick: Yes. So as I say, that was a break in the concept of undergraduate liberal education at Riverside. And it was the first instance where there was a joining together of experiment station personnel and a portion of the letters and science original faculty for a common goal, to establish a graduate educational program at Riverside. Lage: Do you remember what the date would be? Kendrick: Well, it would be in the late fifties or early sixties. I think chemistry probably had the first accepted and recognized graduate program. It is a major undertaking to develop a graduate program. It is not enough to just declare your interest in graduate programs. You have to jump through a lot of academic hoops in the process. Curricula and courses must be designed and developed. They must be accepted by the graduate council. Financial support must be sought from the administration. So it took a lot of doing to propose what you would offer as a graduate program before it was ultimately approved and recognized. Finally, the successful departments would be given authority to train graduate students for the Ph.D.s and/or masters degrees. You had to do more than just declare that you're interested ir a graduate program. These early graduate proposals had to be fought through the local campus educational policy and course approval committees, which was not easy because of the committee domination by faculty from the social sciences and humanities. Professors in these fields were not thrilled with graduate programs coming into being to interfere with their emphasis on the undergraduate education. But the steamroller was underway, and it ultimately prevailed. [The Graduate Division was established in 1961.] I had great enthusiasm for the potential development of the graduate programs because, from somewhat of a selfish point of view, I felt that the quality of research in plant pathology would improve immeasurably if we had the stimulating experience of training students, particularly graduate students. For one thing, I felt that it would prevent the kind of narrcv emphasis that a pure research program tends to develop because, when you 89 Kendrick: begin to study more and more about less and less, you don't have any other challenges. But if you have to offer a course in a subject once in a while, you have to get out and find out what the rest of your professional world is all about. And I felt, and it was shared by a number of my colleagues in the department, that our whole program would improve. I don't think we realized quite as much at the time just how much it would interfere with our devotion of time to the research program, but that seemed to me a small consequence to pay for improving the quality and academic stature of the program. So I was an unqualified endorser of the graduate development. The other thing that happened with the development of the graduate program in the agricultural sciences was that it legitimized the expansion of the professorial titles for experiment station people. If you became involved in designing a program of instruction or supervising graduate students, then that qualified you for an academic title in addition to your experiment station title. And that meant, then, that you had full license to practice in the other part of academic life, and that was participating in the Academic Senate activity. Well, that was also a goal. I felt that if we were going to be a unified campus, we had to have as much participation in the total life of the campus and not carry a we/they — those of you up on the hill, and we down here in the former walnut orchard — attitude. So that the senate provided an opportunity under this expanded program of graduate instruction to meld together some more of the faculty activities. There was a great expansion in the early sixties — '61, '62. '63 — of people in the experiment station being granted academic professorial titles. Lage : Did that create a problem? Were the personnel at the experiment station all suited for this academic title, having been hired just for research? Did they then get evaluated again to see if the academic title — ? Kendrick: I don't recall that the academic titles were evaluated by the budget committee, but there was an evaluation. It may have beer, administrative. It was based not on research as much as whether or not one was engaged in instruction, either through supervising graduate students or in charge of seminars, or offering formal courses. There was no qualification relative to whether or not the kind of research you were doing qualified you for a professorial title. As a matter of fact, if that criterion had been applied to the early assemblage of the letters and science faculty, not very many of them would have qualified, because they were not research-oriented, and they had a very scant record of having had much accomplished. Most of them were just out of school and had done a thesis problem, and that's about the extent 90 Kendrick: to which they had contributed research. As a matter of fact, because it was not a research-oriented group of young faculty, they ultimately had difficulties advancing in their professorial ranks, and that I'll come to a little bit later because I had some personal experience and involvement in that aspect of some of the campus life at Riverside. Directing the Design for a Physical Master Plan. 1959 Kendrick: My title as professor came along about 1961. It was at that point that I became even more thoroughly exposed and engaged in some of the Academic Senate activities. Prior to that, one of the major assignments given to me in 1959 was to chair a small committee to plan for the expansion of the Riverside campus to a student body size of 5,000 in the first phase and to 10,000 students as a second phase, including both graduate and undergraduate education. Chancellor Herman Spieth who succeeded Provost Watkins as the chief campus officer asked if I would chair that effort. I spent most of 1959 on that assignment, with about six other colleagues. Chancellor Spieth appointed me as special assistant to the Chancellor for the assignment. I accepted that appointment not knowing anything about physical master planning, and there was not much history available to draw upon, nor was there anybody at Riverside with any knowledge about how one goes about drawing up those physical master plans. But I quickly determined that I'd better make contact with the physical planning office of UCLA and gain as much information as I could from that institution. I spent a good deal of time associated with George Vernon Russell, who had been appointed earlier as the supervising architect for the Riverside campus. The experience of trying to formulate a basis for how many students one might expect to enroll in your graduate program, hew many undergraduate students will be there, how many you're going to provide a physical residence for, and what offerings might expand, was really an education for me. Lage: So you were concerned with the physical development as well as the program development, is that correct? Kendrick: Well, the charge of the committee was to design a campus plan to physically accommodate a student body of 5,000 students by 1970, I guess. And to not ignore the fact that it might go to 10,000 students in another decade. So our charge was primarily to design a physical plant, but we could not design a physical- pie rtt without having some sort of notion of what the academic planning 91 Kendrick: was to be about. So I would not start with a physical plan without an academic plan in hand because you can't plan a physical plant without knowing what you're going to put into it. Lacking an academic plan that addressed itself to how many students were going to be about and where they would be, we had to dredge up that information as a forerunner to being able to design classrooms and classroom sizes, and whether the physical sciences were going to have more students than the social sciences or the life sciences or what have you. So we had a lot of spade-work, so to speak, to do in consulting with those departments and getting their best estimate of where they thought they were going to go. The whole plan really was predicated on the basis of a lot of wishful thinking, in terms of existing faculty and chairs. But we nevertheless produced a plan — I've still got a copy of it here — that I don't think existed very long with any great degree of authenticity, but it certainly provided a useful education for the seven or eight of us [laughter] who spent a great deal of time endeavoring to produce a master plan. That particular activity began to introduce me to people in the systemwide administration because I had to do a lot of consultation away from Riverside to understand how one approached the planning effort. It also introduced me to the concept of space standards and how much space you develop for a graduate student versus a research lab versus a library versus this that and the other thing. So all the nomenclature of university activity became somewhat familiar to me, with these activities. Lage: It sounds like the kind of job that would be given to a professional planner, rather than to a group of faculty from different fields. Kendrick: That is absolutely correct. And I learned and became acquainted with a number of professional planners in my travels. Lage: Were they put at your disposal? Kendrick: No; well, not really put at my disposal, but I was given leeway to go and visit with them, and — Lage: You didn't have a paid professional at your side? Kendrick: No paid assistants at all. This was taken right out of the hides of — I was given essentially half-time relief from my research duties to do this sort of thing. The rest of the committee was not. They met on call, and we had a lot of called meetings. Riverside did not have a professional planning unit. They did not have a lot of resources in the administration to do this sort of thing, so much of the activities came right out of the 92 Kendrick: hides of the faculty whom the leadership could find willing to take it on. I must say I did it without really realizing how much effort and time I was going to get into and just how ignorant I was about that. Lage: You must have learned a great deal. Kendrick: I emphasize this experience because it was my initial introduction into beginning to understand the University as a whole, compared with just the Department of Plant Pathology in one small unit in an isolated area of the state. That activity just about finished me off. I was becoming so involved with that as well as some other administrative committees that I sought a sabbatical leave. I determined, as I indicated, that I wanted to go to England to spend some time with Dennis Garrett, a lecturer in plant pathology in the botany department at the University of Cambridge, who was an authority on root disease pathogens. I had also determined that I would like to spend some time at the famous Rothamsted agricultural experiment station in England, at Harpenden. Lage: So that puts your sabbatical leave in the context of what was going on in your life at the time. Kendrick: Yes, I expected it to kind of clear the decks and separate me from all of those non-research activities. In the latter part of 1960, I applied for a senior postdoctoral fellowship with the National Science Foundation and was granted one. I was quite thrilled to receive one because it provided the wherewithal for me to take a year off and take my family to England, with the subsequent experiences of rambling a bit around England and the rest of Europe. That sabbatical was taken in 1961 and '62. and was at an odd part of the year. We left in February and came home at the end of February in "62. I think that I said I cace home with renewed enthusiasm about becoming a plant pathologist once again and making some satisfying studies in an area that I felt was deficient in knowledge, that being the population dynamics of soil-borne pathogens, and trying to understand the relationship of microbiological populations to the incidence of pathogenesis and the subsequent severity of the root diseases. Chairman of the Department of Plant Pathology. 1963 ## Kendrick: I returned from England to Riverside in March of 1962. In the meantime, my father had become ill and was really not well at all. A number of years earlier he had developed cancer of the 93 Kendrick: larynx and had radiation treatments, so his voice was somewhat raspy. But emphysema was gaining ground on him in early 1962, and he ultimately succumbed on May 30, 1962. My father's death is still quite vivid in my mind because I was with him in the hospital when he expired. We had become very close by that time. He was following my career with a great deal of interest and encouragement. I had just become a professor of plant pathology by that time. He followed my activities, but I hadn't yet emerged into any leadership role. The chair of the department through this period was John Middleton, my colleague of long standing. We continued our close consultative type relationship through his chairmanship just as we did in our various research programs: some things we did together and some things we did apart, but we were always in very close communication. So throughout his administration of the department, I was kind of unofficially involved in sitting in for him when he was absent, representing him on various departmental assignments when he had other things to do. We talked a lot about how we would like to see the department develop in terms of new positions or changed positions which we felt were necessary to augment our course offering and research agenda. So I felt very close to some of the administrative activities of the department. By that time, John had become almost totally interested in the air pollution program and was pursuing that with a great deal of vigor. It was in late 1962 or early '63, that the university followed his advice and established the statewide Air Pollution Research Center at Riverside, with him as director. He perceived that he really could not be the director of the statewide Air Pollution Research Center and chairman of the Department of Plant Pathology simultaneously, so he resigned from his department chairship. After Dean Boyce consulted with the departmental faculty, he found no serious opposition to my succeeding John, so I became the chair of Plant Pathology in the fiscal year beginning in July of 1963. That, as I think I mentioned, really marked the beginning of my withdrawal from a very active research role, but it was not an action that withdrew me from teaching. I was able to develop an advanced graduate course in plant pathology theory, which I enjoyed and felt that I got about as much out of it as the students did. But it did introduce me into another phase of university activity and administration that proved to be valuable later in some of the other responsibilities that I assumed. 94 Academic Senate Work; Educational Policy, Personnel, Planning Kendrick: With the professorial title and the department chairmanship. there were innumerable opportunities to engage in senate activity. By that time, the Riverside campus had succeeded in separating itself from the paternalism of the UCLA campus and was a freestanding division of the Academic Senate in iself. Through this time period, the senates on the various campuses had undergone an evolution and developed into separate divisions. When I first started my activity in this area, there was a northern division of the senate and a southern division of the senate. The Berkeley campus was the nucleus of the northern division, and the UCLA campus was the nucleus of the southern division. UCLA, Irvine, San Diego, Riverside, and Santa Barbara were part of that southern division, and the rest of the campus faculties were part of the northern division. That was a necessary first step, I guess, in trying to organize the senate so that it could operate with some degree of efficiency. This organizational structure was a forerunner to the Academic Assembly. The Assembly was established to bring representatives from all divisions and University- wide committees into a single body, so that a forum for meeting and representing the entire faculty of the University of California in matters that were appropriate could operate. Some of the committees on which I participated were educational policy and course approval and something called physical planning — I was a natural for physical planning w ith all the background I had in that earlier study. I did not serve or. such committees as welfare, privilege and tenure, or any of that nature. But I was active in the Committee on Committees' affairs. My CES [Citrus Experiment Station] colleagues early determined the importance of that committee for us so we took an interest in its work. I had much help among some colleagues, both in letters and science as well as the experiment station. Randy Wedding, whom I had collaborated with in the cantaloupe crown blight study and some other research in the field, was also interested in the Academic Senate and its activities. He was one of my most ardent colleagues in "senate-watching" (let's put it that way). We tried to make sure that we were going to have proper representation on the Committee on Committees, which was an elected committee — Lage: When you say "we," do you mean — ? Kendrick: Colleagues in the experiment station is what I'm really saying. Lage: What motivated your interest in the Academic Senate? 95 Kendrick: I don't really know, except that my nature — I have always been a person who participated in the organizations in which I was a member. One of the things that motivated my interest in the senate was that it was apparent that the senate was involved in the personal advancement and welfare of the faculty. I felt that if the senate was going to participate to that extent in these matters then we ought to be a part of that process. As I've indicated, since the Committee on Committees was the unit that appointed the memberships of the various committees, we — we being Randy Wedding and Oliver Johnston, who was a philosophy colleague of ours, so to speak from the other camp, and some other allies and friends in the physical and social sciences — we determined to influence the outcome of membership on the Committee on Committees. By and large the faculty does not participate very actively in senate programs. That's true on any campus. Lage: Except in times of crisis. Kendrick: In times of threats and crisis, then you have everybody turning out. But there aren't very many such occasions; the sixties here in Berkeley was a dramatic exception to my statement about faculty disinterest. But the senate, nevertheless, is a significant factor in the development of the University of California, and that becomes obvious if you know what the senate organization does. I figured that's where I wanted to spend part of my time, in making certain, at least, that if things happen, I would have a part in it, or an opportunity to express opposition to some of the things that I took exception to. So it was not unusual that I would become involved because almost in all organization that I got involved in, some way or other I found myself coming to the top. That's one way of looking at it — Lage: Doing the dirty work could be another way of looking at it. [laughter] Kendrick: Well, I guess I've always enjoyed being a part of the decision- making process, let's put it that way. I'm not totally acquiescent in having somebody else make up my mind for me. Some of those activities in the senate gave me an opportunity to become acquainted with other campus personnel with similar assignments in senate activities. I recall being an early alternate representative to the University-wide Academic Senate Educational Policy Committee, and that exposed me to other University campus people. I won't mention all of the activities that grew out of those early senate activities, but they opened up to me the University's activities in various ways. 96 Kendrick: One of the most significant senate activities that I found myself involved in was on the Riverside Budget Committee, as it was known in those days. It had virtually nothing to do with evaluating the budget, but was an academic personnel evaluation committee. I served a two-year period on that Budget Committee, and the real challenge occurred that first year when all five of us were new appointees. We had no holdovers, so we had to construct some new ground rules in order to find out how to operate and what to do. Service on the Budget Committee was a real eye-opener. It's in that kind of committee that you begin to see life in its raw state, and not in its glossed-cver state. Because when you're dealing with peoples' future and their compensation, true characters begin to show. You are able then also to see, with not too much difficulty, good performances, bluffed performances, and poor performances. Lage : How were you evaluating individuals? Through reports of their colleagues, or individual observation, or—-? Kendrick: No, this was a typical personnel evaluation committee that met and commented on the justification for advancement or merit increases, as well as the decision to move to tenure. There were five of us, representing the various activities on the campus. I was the experiment station representative to all intents and purposes. We had a representative each from the humanities, the physical sciences, the social sciences, the life sciences and CES. The process starts by going through the roster of faculty, including both the experiment station and the college, determining those people who are eligible for conside ration, and calling notice to that fact to their department chairs. We also required the chairs to begin the process of putting together the documentation supporting their recommendation if they were going to recommend advancement, and putting together a justification of why they were not going to recommend advancement, if that was their decision. That process is a very complicated one because the chair is supposed to consult among the senior members cf the department, and together they make an evaluation. The chair is free to make independent comments in addition. The routing of the comments is through their respective deans, and the deans must also make a recommendation and an evaluation of the material they receive. If it's a recommendation for promotion, it includes all the published work and evidence of activities, both in teaching, in public service and in university service, in which the individual has been engaged during the period of their employment by the University. For all significant advancements and promotions an additional step was employed. We identified confidential ad-hoc personnel committees which were appointed by the vice chancellor. 97 Kendrick: These ad-hoc committees received all the documentation concerning the individual candidates, evaluated it, then made a positive or a negative recommendation. This information was then returned to the Budget Committee for another independent evaluation of all documentations and recommendations. The Budget Committee's recommendation was then directed to the academic vice chancellor who acted on the information received and his own judgment. The academic vice chancellor whom I worked with was Thomas Jenkin, who had been a dean at UCLA. He is now deceased, but he was a very beloved administrator who came to Riverside with an extensive background in university service and competence in political science, which was his field. He was with Ivan Hinderaker at the time. During this period of activity that I've described, Ivan Hinderaker was the chancellor. He succeeded Herman Spieth as chancellor in 1964. Well, we got through that first year of Budget Committee activities. But that was a time-consuming program; even though we didn't have a lot of cases to consider, it was a significant load for the size of the campus and the amount of support we had. But that experience provided, as I said, a good insight into strengths and weaknesses of individuals and departments. We passed on all the appointments, the level of appointments, and advancements to tenure, as well as denials. As I indicated, all that documentation arrives in the office of the vice chancellor for academic affairs, and then they sent it to the Budget Committee for review. For all promotions, as I said earlier, we nominated an ad-hoc peer review committee for each individual case, usually consisting of three to five people. If we could not get the right mix of professional backgrounds for a candidate's particular field locally, we went to the faculties at UCLA or San Diego or some other campus in order to get proper representation on the committee, so that we'd have somebody on it who understood what the candidate's field was all about. Then that committee made their report and filed it with the Budget Committee. Lage: In the comments you made earlier about the Budget Committee and 'life in its raw state," there seemed to be a lot of emotional content. Kendrick: Well, I indicated that it revealed to me for the first time individuals' true characters. It became pretty easy to determine when a weak case was before you because it usually was full of voluminous extraneous material. Lage: This would have been material put forth by the person's department? 98 Kendrick: That's correct. Lage: Not by the professor himself. Kendrick: No, I didn't mean to imply that the individual was the source of the fluff and the bluff. Although [laughs] that certainly exists. But at all levels, and particularly at the department chair and the dean's levels, it became fairly easy to sort out strong cases from weak cases. Weak cases are not necessarily characterized by a short synopsis. They are more likely to be long and dreary and full of extraneous references, overemphasizing the importance of certain kinds of activities that had peripheral relationships with academic development. It was also a revelation of who were strong chairs and who were weak chairs. You could tell by the kind of documentation they would let go through their hands whether or not you were dealing with a person who really took their job seriously or who just passed it on and made no great effort to spend any time supporting or exercising any independent evaluation. It also displayed another personality character not necessarily associated only with university people. There are more people than not who really wanted to pass the unpopular decisions on to the next level and not make those unpopular decisions themselves, where it should be made in the first place. So we would be handed the unhappy circumstances of denying promotions in cases where the department chair or even a dean had said, "I think this is a worthy case, and I recommend it." Lage: Probably knowing full well it was full of fluff. Kendrick: Knowing that the Budget Committee and the academic vice chancellor would ultimately have to come to grips with it. The second year of my Budget Committee work, I chaired the Budget Committee, so it became my responsibility to organize and see that things ran smoothly. Things ran a little smoother the second year because we had some holdover members and some experience in the process that we had gotten into place in the first year. But it just reinforced my point of view of academic evaluation. That experience was invaluable for my subsequent assignment as the vice president because I could understand where the faculty was coming from and how strong administrators ought to operate. As I'll get into a little bit later, I spent most of my vice presidency trying to introduce a similar academic evaluation system into Cooperative Extension. I think I succeeded, but it was a long tough pull. We'll get into that a little bit later, but the experience I had at Riverside with academic evaluation for faculty I thought was valuable enough to try and introduce to Cooperative Extension so that it would take out the arbitrariness of administrative decision-making. 99 Statewide Senate Involvement Kendrick: My Budget Committee service exposed me to university-wide budget and personnel committees. I became acquainted with other budget committee chairs from other campuses. As chair of your division budget committee, you were an ex-officio member of the statewide budget committee where we considered broader issues of public policy. I remember one of the nagging issues that we had to consider as a university-wide committee was whether or not to approve the inauguration of a special salary scale for lawyers. That was sort of the first chink in the armor, so to speak, of standardized professorial salaries, irrespective of the discipline. The lawyers were chafing at the bit because they felt that they were being disadvantaged monetarily and were not able to hire qualified people at the level of university salaries. There was long and arduous debate in this university- wide budget committee on whether or not it was good for the university to recognize special needs as far as salary for special disciplines was concerned. We had most law school deans come and testify before us and try to persuade us to approve the special salary scale and as I recall, we ultimately agreed that perhaps they had a case. Lage: Reluctantly, I'm sure. Kendrick: It was very reluctant because it was most difficult for faculty from, particularly, letters and science and the nonprofessional disciplines to understand why a professor of law was any more valuable to the institution than a professor of classics. And it was really a hard swallow to recognize that if we wanted a competent legal faculty, we had to compete with the outside world for that competence and not just the internal academic world. Well, it wasn't long before physicians were on our tail, of course. To some extent, they already had a special salary scale. I'm not going to dwell on this long, but the thing that I remember about that early exposure was the fundamental difference between the physicians and the lawyers. The lawyers ignored the professional ranks of the faculty because they attached less significance to rank than they did money. As a matter of fact, they appointed all new faculty as acting professors. They didn't appoint them acting assistant professors or acting associate professors, they were acting professors. The way they achieved tenure was to remove the acting after three to four years, and then they became a professor at this rather enhanced salary level. As far as the physicians were concerned, they wouldn't have anything to do with that concept. They weren't going to appoint anybody as an acting professor of medicine; they had to start 100 Kendrick: back down at the assistant professor level [laughter] and jump through the hoops, and advance through the regular academic ladder. On the other hand they didn't mind paying an acting assistant professor three times what a regular faculty professor might be getting. Money was the most significant factor to the physicians, but they held very tightly to the notion that they didn't want to disregard the ranks in the professorial series. That was an interesting revelation of points of view from two significant professions within our institution. The Academic Council Kendrick: The next step in my administrative education occurred through a lucky serendipitous act by the university-wide Academic Senate's Committee on Committees. I recall that Randy Wedding was the Riverside representative to the university-wide Committee on Committees about 1966. Ke called me from a meeting that they were having. I was ir. Monterey at a professional plant pathology meeting, and he called me to see if I would be willing to accept an appointment as a member of the Academic Council. I knew a bit of what the Academic Council was all about, because from my various activities I had become aware that they sat as the hierarchy of the Senate. I said, "Well, what does it entail?" Ultimately, I said, "Yes, I'll accept that." So in 1966, I joined the council, and in 1967, with Professor Rcbley Williams from the Berkeley campus as the chair, I became vice chair of the Academic Council. The officers of the council are also the officers of the Academic Assembly. So the chair and the vice chair are also the chair and the vice chair of the assembly. Lage: Is the council a smaller component of the assembly? Kendrick: The council is composed of — I don't think this is exactly correct — but its membership is composed of chairs of the significant Academic Senate university-wide committees, such as educational policy, welfare, budget, and graduate affairs, as well as the division chairs of the campus Academic Senates. There are nine divisions, and they each operate with a local chairman. Those nine people are automatically members of the council. So the council is about fifteen people, with the chair and the vice chair not representing any one of the committees or the divisions. 101 Lage: Now, what is the council's responsibility? Kendrick: The council rieets monthly. It's really the evaluator and commentator on senate matters that must have total senate attention. Lage: Do they work with the president? Kendrick: They work with the president. It's the major contact that the President's Office has with the senate. The chair and the vice chair attend all Regents' meetings, and have the privilege of sitting at the Regents' table, but they do not vote. They're not faculty Regents, but they are given the privilege of commenting any time on any subject and they participate in all open and closed and executive session meetings. The students chose to go the other route. They wanted a student Regent. The faculty decided that they really didn't want to be placed in a position of having a single person represent total faculty point of view [as a member of the Board of Regents], realizing that that's a very difficult thing to do. So they chose the other alternative, and that was to participate in all discussions, without feeling that they had to vote. I think it was a wise decision, and I think it's been a helpful decision as far as the Regents were concerned. Well, that was another step in my exposure to University life. The chair and the vice chair of the Academic Council also participate in defending the University's budget in Sacramento in the spring, when the subject matter happens to be a faculty topic, such as salary or teaching load. There are a surprising number of interesting topics that the legislature gets into, and the chair of the Academic Council usually dedicates the entire year to being chair. Because during that spring, you could find yourself tootling up to Sacramento four days a week for about six to eight weeks during the University's legislative budget hearings. Lage: This takes you out of teaching and research. Kendrick: They're provided with relief to do so. That was not the case when I was the vice chair and Robley was the chair. The involvement had not developed to that extent at that time. I'm describing the chair and the vice chair in more recent years as we've gotten into more complicated relationships with the legislature. But the chair and the vice chair were expected to participate in a lot of administrative, system-wide committees, one of which was called the Building and Campus Development Committee, chaired by Harry Wellmaru This committee went from campus to campus to listen to the plea for augmenting the budget for physical plant development, as well as 102 Kendrick: academic program development. It was sort of a traveling road show composed of a number of administrators, plus the Academic Council Representation — usually Robley and me — although we attempted to divide up the workload, and I would go to some and he would go to others. But that was the first regular assignment that put me in touch with the president, but more particularly with the vice president, who happened to be Harry Wellman at the time. In 1967-68, that Academic Council that I was a part of was a very interesting council. Randy Wedding really caught the Committee on Committees without having done their homework, and so when it came time to consider chairs of various kinds of committees that the university-wide senate was engaged in, he had a candidate for each. Some of the other campuses didn't. So we wound up that year with about five members from Riverside on the Academic Council. This council that was representing the entire University of California, had more than its share of members including the chair of the graduate council and several other representatives from Riverside — I'll have to dig out an old picture of that council in order to remember just how many and who they were. But I do remember Bob Gleckner was on it, and George Zentmyer was on it, I was on it. Someone else also. The other thing of interest about that council was that Bill [William J.] McGill, from San Diego was representing his division in San Diego, and Frank [Francis] Sooy was on it from San Francisco. Subsequently — I'm going to jump ahead a little — but subsequently President Charlie Hitch ruined that particular council by selecting me to be the vice president Agricultural Sciences, a little later Bill McGill as chancellor at the San Diego campus, and, finally, Frank Sooy as chancellor of the San Francisco campus. So it proved to be quite a fertile ground for future administrators. With my former colleagues on the council occupying significant administrative positions I felt that I w as greatly advantaged early on in my relationships with most of the campus chancellors. • The experience on the council and its subsequent linkage to the system-wide administrative assignments gave me some appreciation and flavor of what the individual campus administrations were all about. I have always said that if one had set out to design a training course for an administrator who ultimately was going to have some system-wide responsibilities — such as the vice president for agricultural sciences — I couldn't have been better trained. Coming up through the whole system with exposure to physical development, budget development, academic development, and campus review of different units of the university were important training activities. I had experienced the growth and development of Davis through the eyes of my father and observed the evolution of the Davis relationship with 103 Kendrick : Berkeley. Then I experienced again myself a the similar evolution of a relatively small experiment station at Riverside undergoing the introduction of instruction and graduate development at that institution and our ultimate separation from UCLA's oversight of Riverside's development — emerging, so to speak, from adolescence to adulthood. So I think it was a unique and invaluable experience to start off as a vice president with that background. In spite of this when I arrived in Berkeley as a vice president, I didn't really know what I was getting into. Organization of the Statewide Agricultural Unit Lage : As you went through these various steps, did you begin to have in your mind that you'd like to move more into administration? Kendrick: No, I really didn't. I w as really doing what came next. I was aware that we had a system-wide administrative unit in agriculture. I knew that Harry Wellman had emerged from that role into the university's vice presidency role and was a very significant administrator not only for agriculture, but for campus developments, as President dark Kerr's right-hand person in the expansion of the university's physical and academic offerings. Paul Sharp was the first free-standing director of the Agricultural Experiment Station. He was appointed by Wellman, as I recall. He traveled around and visited the campuses, and we used to turn out like good soldiers and "let the captain review his troops" when he would show up. But I was not really aware that any of his actions had any really significant influence on what I was doing at the time or what we were doing at the experiment station. We became a bit more aware of the university-wide administration when Dan Aldrich moved from his chairman of the soils department at Davis into what was then called the University dean for agriculture. In Al Boyce's autobiography he was mistaken in indicating that Aldrich occupied the resurrection of the title. Harry Wellman was the vice president for Agricultural Sciences, and when he moved out of that role, the title was changed to University dean of agriculture. And at that time, the University dean of agriculture really functioned as a dean because all the courses and curricula that were developed by the respective colleges had to have the dean's approval, had to have Aldrich's approval. 10A Kendrick: There was also a University dean of extension at the time, so there were two University deans. It made a little more sense for University Extension to have a centralized dean because there really were opportunities for him to be concerned about the curricula they were offering. Aldrich also, to some extent, participated in determining department chairs and new appointments. I remember when Hutchison was the dean, he was involved in every aspect of appointment, promotion, and department chair designation. But it became increasingly difficult to operate as a dean with no resident faculty and no resident students from University Hall. And that title became somewhat obsolete. But nevertheless it continued to exist during Dan Aldrich's tenure, and it also existed during Maurice Peterson's tenure. He had been brought to University Hall, I think by Dan, to be the director of the experiment station, succeeding Paul Sharp. He operated in that capacity early on until Dan Aldrich was appointed chancellor of the Irvine campus. So Peterson, an agronomist from Davis, succeeded Dan about 1963 or '64 as the University dean for agriculture. He, in due course, brought Clarence Kelly, an agricultural engineer, down from Davis, to be the director of the experiment station, and the two of them functioned for some time as University dean and director, respectively. I became a bit more aware of the university-wide function under that particular regime, although I followed Dan just because we were close friends. Then when I was department chair, I would see a little more of the university-wide administrative unit in agriculture than the ordinary participant would. When Pete resigned as the University dean of agriculture in the early fall of 1967, Kelly was asked to perform both director and dean functions. Those of us in the south sort of lost track of the fact that we even had a University dean. I am really answering the question that you raised of whether, having participated in these other activities, did I develop an urge for administrative work. At the time, we knew that Al Boyce was going to reach retirement age as director and dean of the College of Agricultural Sciences at Riverside. I had been chair of the department for five years, and I really had a lot of interest in how Riverside was to be developed. At that point, while I was not aspiring to be the dean, I felt that I ought to be considered strongly for that role, given all of the other stuff that I had done at Riverside and my interest in its development. There was a period when I was a bit disappointed that I didn1': detect any activity jr interest in my being dear. down there other than an occasional reference to it. So I was 105 Kendrick: somewhat frustrated, not realizing j ust how that was going to go. I was interested in who might be dean, if it were not to come my way. It wasn't a position that I aspired to, but it was a little bit like I had felt about the chairmanship of the department. I had enough confidence in my own ability that I felt that I was competent to handle the position, at least as much as my colleagues, if not more than most of them. And I felt somewhat similar about the deanship; I felt that if I weren't given at least a chance to be interviewed for it to give some ideas about where I thought the college ought to go that that was an oversight. Well, as it turned out, the chancellor and Harry Wellman had other ideas about my future, and I didn't know about them. That explains a little the lack of talking to me about the deanship, I think. I'm just guessing, because it's never been revealed to me just what was going on in that time. But I had sort of lost track of the fact that there was a vacancy in the university dean position, and furthermore I was not a highly ranked administrator nor an obvious candidate for a university-wide administrative responsibil ity . Lage: It was a big jump. Kendrick: And to jump from a department chair to a vice presidency was nothing that I contemplated. I thought that a natural evolution for that sort of thing would be to take on the next larger unit, and that in my case would be a college administration of some kind. So we'll leave it at that. Lage: That's a good place to stop. 106 V PLANT PATHOLOGY DURING YEARS OF CHANGE AT RIVERSIDE A Collection of Specialties [Date of interview: September 28. 1987] //# Lage: We were going to start out today talking about the plant patho logy department at Riverside and how you built up the faculty. Kendrick: All right. The Department of Plant Pathology at Riverside was kind of a traditionally constructed department, as were the departments of plant pathology at Berkeley and Davis. What I mean by that is that the personnel were traditionally trained plant pa thlo gists who had gone to graduate schools in various universities of the United States and had degrees in plant pathology. Plant pathology is a profession, as I have maintained, that is not a pure science. By that I mean that it isn't narrowly focused like a chemistry department, which is all chemistry, or a physics department, which is all physics — realizing, of course, that there are various aspects of those fundamental sciences that make them quite diverse too. But plant pathology really is an amalgamation of a number of microbiological departments that deal with the infectious nature of the organism on a host plant. So that it's a profession that deals with the interaction of parasites and biological organisms which host them producing some kind of adverse event as far as the plant host is concerned. So in the early days, plant pathologists studied the reaction of plants to these external organisms and tried to prevent their adverse consequences. But as I've already indicated, one of the adverse effects we noticed early on was air pollution, and that's not an organism, that's a chemical that causes a plant reaction which is plant damaging. There are other kinds of chemicals that are either administered to a plant in excess or they show up being deficient, which also produces a plant that looks sick or not normal. 107 Kendrick: So plant pathology is really a collection of specialties whose common thread is that you deal with a plant that looks sick or at least does not look normal. As long as you're studying the plant itself in these situations, it's understandable why you would add to your faculty people trained mainly in plant pathology. As we got into studying more and more of the whys and wherefores of these adverse reactions to plants, it became evident that we really needed to have people in the department trained in some of these more narrowly defined specialties, so that instead of their focus being directed to the plant they would pay primary attention to the organism or the event that led up to those adverse associations in plants. So that was the beginning of breaking out of the mold of looking for new faculty members only in departments of plant pathology. We wanted to add chemists, microbiologists, and plant biochemists to our plant pathology staff. This, I would say, came into prominent consideration during the late fifties. Lage: Was this a trend nationwide? Kendrick: Yes. It was kind of a trend nationwide. Lage: It wasn' t a controversial issue at Riverside, then? Kendrick: No. One of the first people to promote this notion was Director Al Boyce. Al was an entomologist dealing with insecticide applications to control insects. He early on saw the necessity to build up data on the chemistry of the insecticide residues, and he sought to add chemists to the Department of Entomology, so they developed a residue chemistry section. He ran into a little controversy with the Department of Agricultural Chemistry in the early days, because they felt that the chemistry associated with pesticide application should be done in the Department of Agricultural Chemistry; why put a chemist in the Department of Entomology? Al ultimately prevailed and added a chemistry section in the Department of Entomology, which became quite renowned and famous. He also added a section on the toxicology of insecticides, and that was oriented heavily to biochemistry. We had a fungicide section in the Department of Plant Pathology, and we saw a need to have our chemistry section also, that is, Middleton and some of the rest of us saw the need. So we sought a chemist to add to the department in the mid-fifties, I think it was, when we were dealing with a problem of citrus — postharvest decay of the citrus fruit. We needed to understand the chemistry involved with the fungicides and the residues that might be present on the fruits. 108 Kendrick: So the first breakthrough as far as adding faculty members outside the tradition of plant pathology came from the chemistry group in Entomology when a chemist. Marty [Martin] Kolbezen transferred to our department to work as a chemist in our postharvest decay program. Lage : It sounds as if there was a lot of team work. Is that correct? Kendrick: Well, that's right. When you begin to branch out. then you need to form teams of research efforts and not place all the responsi bility on one person. You must have leaders of the team, but it becomes a collaborative effort. It was easier to build collabor ation teams when the members from these allied professions were members of your own department, rather than a member of another department where they have different allegiences and different motivations in getting their academic work done. Adding Specialists to the Department's Faculty Kendrick: With that emphasis, then we began thinking about the physiology of disease, and the microbiology of the organisms, and the emphasis of the interaction of the organism and its host. John Middleton and I, with agreement of the other members of our departments, sought to add a man by the name of Solomon Bartnicki-Garcia. Dr. Bartnicki was occupying a postdoctoral position at Rutgers University at the time, working in Dr. Waksman's laboratory. Waksman was a famous microbiologist, who discovered some of the antibiotics that are in common use. Dr. Bartnicki-Garcia seemed to be an outstanding candidate to study the microbiology of some of the organisms that we were concerned with, and we invited him to join the department. That was really the first instance when we began to go into the microbiology studies with the emphasis on the organism — the study of the organism — with a specialist who had been trained in the biochemistry and biology of the organism, rather than in the more generalized training of plant pathology. I don't think Dr. Bartnicki-Garcia had had any training in plant pathology per se. Dr. Bartnicki was a native of Mexico, and I struggled to get him off of student visa status into a regular immigration status. There was a lot of activity associated with making him a legal immigrant rather than an illegal alien. As a result of much maneuvering and pleading and special contact with Immigration Service, we finally arranged to have him enter the country legally with a visa that had no termination date, by going back to Tijuana and coming back through the border in this different status. You never know as a department chair what sort of problems you're going to have to deal with. 109 Kendrick: Anyway, Solomon appeared to be quite an interesting addition to the department, he was very sharp and he brought a different dimension of thinking to the group. He also was a little irreverant of the older people in the department. So it took a little doing to get him settled in, but I have always had a great fondness for what he added to the department — embarking on this rather broadened approach to plant pathology. In the course of adding competence in our chemistry section in the department, we added a person to the department by the name of Bill Moj e (now deceased), who came to us from the Department of Chemistry at UCF. His specialty was dealing with the chemistry of natural products. We felt that it was necessary to have an understanding of what the potential antibiotic capacity of these natural products were, as well as an understanding of potential resistance in natural products through their own chemical barriers to infection. Lage: You're going to have to tell me what you mean by natural products. Kendrick: Well, a natural product is — well, let's just take the orange and the orange peel. If you tear apart the orange peel and study the chemistry of the volatiles, the vapors you smell, or the juice you squeeze out — that's natural product chemistry. Natural product chemistry is the study of the chemistry of the banana peel, or of the banana itself, or the orange, or the orange peel, or the grapefruit, or the grapefruit peel, or the roots or the leaves of plants, for example. It's not a study of the chemicals per se. Natural product chemicals have a lot of appeal in use to control the bad bugs because they are naturally occurring in the fruits and vegetables of plants in the first place. They're not additives, and therefore they don't come under the category cf additives, fungicides, or pesticides. They are more acceptable by the general public because they do occur naturally. The problem is that there are some very deadly natural product chemicals. Just because they occur naturally does not necessarily make them any safer. That's why you have chemists who are natural-product chemists, who begin to unravel all that kind of stuff so we can understand what we're dealing with. Lage: It sounds as if you were concerned early on with something that became popular much later. Kendrick: Well, I don't want to take too much credit for this move, because similar changes were occurring in the outstanding departments of plant pathology in the U.S. 110 Lage: It seemed like a new concern later on, in the late sixties and seventies. Kendrick: Correct. But in the late fifties, we were already adding that kind of competence to our Department of Plant Pathology. We were also interested in the biochemistry of viruses, and so we added to our department a young man by the name of Dr. Semancik, who. while trained as a plant pathologist, had his background pretty much in the biochemistry of virology. In other words, he was studying the virus itself rather than the interaction. And as you can detect in what I'm describing — we were adding to our department people who tended to emphasize the cause rather than the result of plant infection, and these new members were skilled and trained in studying the nature of the causal organism. We were probably, unbeknownst to us, backing away from control. We felt that if we could understand the cause better, we might be able to devise the control — Lage: So it seems like a less immediately practical focus. Kendrick: That's very true. Well, as it's now known and now described, we were strengthening the basic research aspect of plant pathology, somewhat at the expense of the applied research, which would have more emphasis on the controlling part of plant pathology studies. Lage: Was this change influenced by the beginning of the teaching function also, or was it a separate trend? Kendrick: No, I would say teaching had very little to do with it. It was more influenced by the feeling of a few of us who were fairly senior in the department that what we were doing previously was emphasizing stop-gap control measures. They weren't lasting and they weren't based upon any fundamental information. We felt that, in fact, this move would lead to a more consistent control of the diseases that we were concerned with. This reemphasis began with Middleton and I followed on — John and I did a lot of consulting together — Dr. Zentmyer, of course, was part of this strategy group and subsequently he was the department chairman after I left. But there was no real resistance in the department to this move, and the departments at Davis and Berkeley were moving somewhat in the same direction. We could also see that the departments in Wisconsin and Cornell had both moved in this general direction, so we weren't as unique in this as it appeared locally. We probably had more pure chemistry in our department at Riverside than they had in some of those other departments, however. Ill Kendrick: With the addition of Semancik, the study of virology and the study of the viruses itself took a big spurt, and moved forward in good order. The last appointment I made which added a broadened dimension of research in the department was Noel Keen, who came from Wisconsin. He was trained as a plant pathologist, but his emphasis was on the physiology of disease, strongly oriented towards the laboratory study of what is going on in the plant when infected by an organism. He studied the physiological changes that occur inside the plant during the courses of infec tion and subsequent disease development. So that added another competence to this group of chemists, biochemists and virologists. Trend Toward Over- Specialization; Need for Redefinition of the Field Kendrick: By 1968, when I had bid adieu to it, the department was a pretty broadly based department of competencies and specialties that complemented one another and covered a gamut of things involved in the diseases of plants. I thought that was a fairly forward way of looking at things, but it came at somewhat of a price of less emphasis on the applied nature of plant pathology. My concern about plant pathology as a profession today is that the whole profession has gone that way. Lage : Into specialization? Kendrick: Into specialization. You go to a professional meeting nowadays, and it looks like a collection of an applied biology and chemistry sections. The kinds of papers and the thesis research are very specific, quite detailed, and very biochemistry- oriented. Not very much attention is being given to controlling the nature of what is going on in plants after these events get initiated. So I think that the profession needs a redefinition of what it is that keeps it together in the first place. In my view, it is a profession that is uniquely capable of studying the interaction of biological systems that result in an adverse consequence for the plant, the host plant. If there isn't some attention at redefinition of emphasis to this interaction and an effort to control, or at least ameliorate, the adversities, then there really isn't anything in common to hold the profession together. It's just a collection of specialties. The departments have an important role in that because if they don't emphasize that, the profession can't change it, because the profession is a collection of people who like to go the meetings and talk to one another. So I really think the departments, and particularly those in California, have a real challenge to try and restate what plant pathology is about. 112 Lage: I've heard from people in other disciplines that team research is difficult to sustain. People get involved in their own projects, and it's hard to keep a team approach going. Have you heard of that in plant pathology? Kendrick: Yes. I'm glad you brought me back to that topic. That's one of the most difficult evolutionary steps in this whole business. The recognition of accomplishment is really what sustains this whole academic community. It's not the monetary rewards that keep people going in the directions they go; it is recognition. There is a certain monetary aspect to that because that recognition also results in promotions and movement into tenure and the rest of the things that are associated with the academic community. So recognition is all- important. When you have a team of more than two people — three, four, five, sometimes six, eight, or more — it is difficult to identify and partition recognition among that team, as to who did what and how important this person was to that team, or somebody else was. This is particularly true in California, the University of California, where the recognition is evaluated by your peers ir. the Academic Senate. Co-authored papers are not given as much weight as single-authored papers, where there is no question about who is responsible for what has been written or cl aided. I've seen a big difference in recognition depending on whom is the senior author, and it also makes a big difference whether you're at the tail end of that string of authors, or whether you are the second or third or fourth person. All of that mitigates against team research. That becomes a difficult problem for an administrator, to look forward to my career as a vice president. The Division of Agricultural Sciences, or its successor, the Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources, is put together to solve problems, agricultural problems, and the problems are not pure single- science or single-discipline problems. They cross boundary lines of departments; they cross boundary lines of locations; they cross boundary lines of subject matter. So the problems don't orient themselves in a way that single departments can alone solve them. What you have in the academic community is a system for partitioning recognition and giving credit and identifying creativity that becomes very difficult in these team efforts. One way of solving that sort of thing is to tackle a big problem with a big team, and if you plan it correctly, you partition off the resultant descriptions of accomplishments and papers and give different members of that team the opportunity to be s« nior 113 Kendrick: authors. But it's an incompatible system; there's no way around it. The bigger the team, the more difficult it is for recognition to be granted equally to all the contributors. We had a further complication in our department, after having gone the route of trying to move out into other disciplines and add them to our department. A case in point were the two chemists who had, from our perspective, helped us very much in our approach to understanding the diseases and the organisms causing them. But when it came time to evaluate those chemists, in terms of their contributions, if their publications were too oriented into plant pathology, the chemists, pure chemists, who sat on their ad-hoc committees wouldn't give them very much credit for that kind of contribution because they weren't really contributing to chemistry. As plant pathologists they weren't given all the credit they should be given either, because their contributions weren't really very fundamental plant pathology; it was more chemically oriented. So they were caught in between professions, where the chemists either tended to disown them because they weren't contributing to fundamental knowledge in chemistry, and the plant pathologists wouldn't really claim them because they weren't contributing to the fundamental plant pathology. And that was a problem. I think they ultimately suffered a little bit in the academic progression through the system, although we chairs prevailed and they ultimately got along pretty well. But it's another irony of the academic system, that it really functions best when you are studying a very minute section of a very discrete discipline, where your peers can really get in and understand what it is you're doing. The broader-based you become, the more people are involved in collaborative efforts, the more obscure these evaluations become. So it presents a real challenge to the system. We were able to get through it, but it's not something you can weigh or measure well, any way other than in an abstract way. Anyway, I don't mean to imply that plant pathology was the only department at Riverside that was moving off in that direction, but I think it kind of helped lead the way. Graduate TeachinR Program Initiated, 1962 Kendrick: The teaching program, centered largely in the graduate studies, was initiated in 1962. That was a significant event for our department, one that I promoted with a lot of enthusiasm with the help of my colleagues. There was really not any identifiable resistance to that of which I was aware. I don't mean to claim 114 Kendrick: that I am the only one that really brought it through because in the latter part of 1962 I was on sabbatical leave. The groundwork was laid with John Middleton during his chairmanship, and we were all anxious that we be fairly recognized as a teaching department, with the subsequent augmentation of our titles into the professorial series, so that we became a part of that teaching faculty. Lage: Did everybody in the department join the professorial ranks? Kendrick: Not at the same time. It was granted rather piecemeal, depending on what courses you were offering, how many graduate students you were supervising, and whether you had charge of a seminar or special studies. So it did not produce blanket recognition with augmentation of titles for everyone. A few in the department never were offered academic title, within senate professorial series, because they didn't ever really engage in the teaching program. But adding graduate students to our portfolio of activities was a fairly significant event, as far as the department was concerned. It changed the attitude and the focus of the research. You couldn't assign a graduate student a problem of improving the varietal performance of citrus. You had to give them some kind of a research program that had an opportunity to come to fruition and conclusion within a reasonable length of time — a year, year and a half, or two. So the nature of the studies necessarily became more fundamental, more circumscribed. It also forced those of us who became involved in formal course teaching to think beyond our own immediate problem area — in my case, the vegetable diseases. I had to think in terms of a generalized program of pathogenesis and epidemiology and the effects of disease development. I was teaching an advanced course in plant pathology, one that was designed to cap off the training of the students, so that when they were ready to go into the field and start operating on their own. they had some familiarity, or at least they could remember having discussed how you approach these mysterious things you see in the field, and what sort of things you begin to unravel and study. So the beginning of the graduate program was important for the direction and the emphasis of the department and the people in it. We had kind of a ready-made market for entering students because the international reputation that our citrus pathologists had accumulated over the years brought to Riverside students of colleagues in Japan, South Africa, South America, Italy, Spain, and all of the citrus- grow ing areas of the world. Israel was another country with which we collaborated. Lage: That must have changed the nature of things at Riverside, too. 115 Kendrick: Oh, it certainly did. We had a heavy emphasis on foreign students. That kind of internationalized our outlook. It really was a delightful exposure for me during the five years that I was a department chair. I tried to take a note from my father's way of handling graduate students and tried to create opportunities to make them feel more at home. So it wasn't just a formal teaching experience in which there was a gulf between the faculty and the students. I probably came to this conclusion with more emphasis because my experience at Cambridge during my sabbatical leave in '61 and '62 was so fresh in my mind. It was so apparent that the graduate students at the Cambridge University did not have a close, friendly relationship with the supervisors of their research. It was kind of a formal and stiff relationship, in spite of the fact that the professor or the senior lecturer would have a Sunday tea once in a while for the students and think that that was discharging their social duties to them. Socializing was more important than I thought in general from another standpoint, using my own experience at Wisconsin. As I described J. C. Walker, he was kind of a tough, gruff fellow at work, but he was very personable on a social basis. His graduate students gathered at his home, with Mrs. Walker, rather regularly for social events. And we got to see him in a different light than the teacher-student relationship. Well, not to belabor the point, I attempted to bring that kind of camaraderie and social experience to these students in plant pathology. And I think it worked out pretty well. We entertained in our home regularly a number of times. We would try to have departmental events, picnics and the like. The barrier between teacher and student was at least lowered, to a considerable extent. I guess that's about where I'm going to leave it. One of the lasting things that I'm pleased to note is still hanging on at Riverside is that the department still holds the Conversazione. This is an event which is more than a seminar. It is an event in which the faculty and the students would gather on a regular basis during the academic year and listen to a speaker on a topic, on which they could develop some conversation. In trying to design an attractive way to describe it, I came up with the notion that it ought to be called the Conversaz ior.e, Italian spelling. It got institutionalized, and we held them regularly enough so that it really worked out pretty well, with an informal evening meeting for an hour or two, where the students really felt that they could come in and meet the faculty in a friendly informal atmosphere. We usually served coffee and donuts or sweet rolls as refreshments. 116 Lage: And this was just graduate students, or would it include undergraduates? Kendrick: We really didn't have any undergraduates. We had a graduate program, but we didn't have any undergraduate teaching. Plant pathology offers in some institutions an undergraduate degree, but it doesn't really lend itself to an undergraduate degree because you have to get so much background, so much biology first. By the time you get all of the botany, the chemistry and the microbiology and all you really need before you begin to study abnormal botany, you've finished your four years. So there's not a lot of room left in an undergraduate curriculum to put enough plant pathology into it to get a degree in plant pathology. So we didn't pursue the undergraduate degree; fundamentally it's a graduate program. I notice once in a while when I see the meeting schedule for the Department of Plant Pathology at Riverside that they're still meeting for the Cor.versaz ione. Lage: That's a nice legacy. Kendrick: They probably don't know who introduced the idea. Lage: How did you happen to pick that name? Where did the Italian name come in? Kendrick: Cambridge. They had a Conversaz ione. I don't know why they have an Italian name, but it was one of the things I brought back from there, and I thought it would be a good idea to try it at Riverside. Let me say one more thing about the three departments of plant pathology in the University of California. We had a practice that started with my father, John Middleton and Dr. Gardner at Berkeley, of holding a statewide plant pathology conference once a year. That was motivated by a desire of the members of the three departments to become better acquainted w ith each other, and it was constructed around sessions in which we would talk about subjects of interest to the whole group. Since this was prior to the time when we at Riverside were engaged in teaching, the teaching subjects were not sessions that we would participate in, but there would be sessions that were research- oriented or policy- orientated, or dealing with budget problems or personnel evaluation techniques and policies. But the major emphasis was to get better acquainted with one another. That continued quite productively. I think it's fallen off a little bit nowadays; I don't think they meet more than about once every two years, and the attendance tends not to be as good as it was in those early years. But during the years that I had anything to do with it, we had pretty good attendance. 117 Kendrick: We created a small executive group with the three department chairs and a representative from each of the three departments. This executive committee of six people handled things of common interest and need without needing to call everybody together for a meeting. So it was an attempt by us, as departments, to collaborate and not pursue things that got in one another's way. I think it worked out to our advantage — that was a nonadministratively stimulated effort, although the administration at the time certainly didn't discourage us from getting together. The entomology department at Berkeley and Riverside and Davis also did the same thing, in a little different way. 118 VI THE KENDRICKS' COMWNITY ACTIVITIES IN RIVERSIDE Active in the Presbyterian Church Kendrick: Let's get on to some of the community activities. Lage: How large a community was Riverside? Kendrick: Well, in 1947 when we arrived in town, the city had a population of about 35,000 people. The city boundaries suggested a city larger than that, but there was a lot of agriculture inside the city limits. It was a long narrow city; distance from the north boundary to the southern boundary was nearly eight or ten miles. It bordered the Santa Ana River, which is underground most of the time, except in flood stages. It's a river that's been sanded up through the years of flooding and floodplain activity. The channel is perfectly obvious, and it's a fairly wide channel. So the city of Riverside was built on the side of the river. The community was relatively small, although it was much larger than Davis, which was a very small community, not exceeding about 1,500 people in those early days when I was associated with it. So Riverside was a fairly good-sized metropolis when we moved there in 1947. Of course, now it's much, much bigger. The community activities began for us primarily with our association with Calvary Presbyterian Church. When Evelyn and I moved to Riverside, we had a difficult time finding a place to live. We first lived in a room in the home of the mother of one of the subsequent faculty members of Riverside, Mrs. Bingham. That gave us a couple of months to look around, and we found a two-bedroom duplex in the western part of town about five miles from the Citrus Experiment Station. It was very comfortable. The other part of it was occupied by Lillian and Bud Bartlett. Bud was a member of the entomology department in the Citrus Experiment Station so we shared our transportation to work with each other. 119 Kendrick: Then we decided that we would take the plunge and build our own home in 1950. We moved to the eastern part of the city, near the city limits. Our property was near the west border of the Citrus Experiment Station on a street called Prince Albert Drive. That's where we were when we moved to Berkeley in 1968. But our beginning association with the city of Riverside itself began with our contacts and our attendance at Calvary Presbyterian Church, which was a large downtown church, next to the community hospital. It was an urban church and had a congregation of a large size. Its congregation was made up of a pretty good cross-section of Riverside's professional people, business persons, doctors, lawyers, bankers, municipal judges, county judges, municipal and county school officials. We got invited by someone to a group called Mariners, which was a group for young couples. That is where we found the various professional and business people. One of the leaders of that group at that time was the secretary of the Riverside Chamber of Commerce, a fellow named Chuck [Charles B.] O'Neill. Chuck O'Neill was, like a lot of the executive managers of chambers of commerce, a very outgoing person, very easy to know and quite friendly. And of course he made us feel at home instantly. It's interesting to note that he was a vigorous member of the Citizens' University Committee that was quite active in the early fifties in trying to persuade the Regents to establish the College of Letters and Science at Riverside. So he had more than a casual interest in people who were from the Citrus Experiment Station. And subsequently, Chuck O'Neill was employed by the experiment station to be their business manager. Lage: Town and gown coming together. Kendrick: Town and gown was really coming together quite well. That experience of becoming acquainted with a cross—section of Riverside very early in our stay introduced us to a number of people whom we became friendly with in a social way and led us to spend our leisure time with the citizens of Riverside, rather than socializing with colleagues whom I was with most of the day. I'd have to say that is not the usual way in which the academic community relates to one another. They tend to isolate themselves among themselves and not mix into the community. Well, it wasn't too long, without campaigning for it, that Evelyn and I wound up as the chief Mariners. Mariners, I think, is a Presbyterian term used to describe the group for young married couples. 120 Kendrick: You'll also notice how I said it was a group for young married couples, which really describes the times of the late forties and fifties. It was assumed that most young couples were married, not the kind of mixed family relationships which are so common today. But as I had started to say, Evelyn and I found ourselves captains of the Mariners — I forget what title they called their leadership, but — within short order, we were the leaders of that group. And of course, that gives you a great opportunity to know everybody, work with them, and find out what they do and what they're interested in. So we quickly became well-known in the group, as well as making a lot of friends among a wide array of Riverside citizens. I became fairly active in the choir. I liked choral wcrk, and during most of the years I was in Riverside, I sang in the choir. That placed me with another group of people, and I got a little better acquainted with the inner workings of a large church. This church, as I recall, must have had twelve or fifteen hundred members. It was not small. I progressed through the various activity groups of the church, becoming a deacon and then an elder. I participated in a building committee program, and we built the main sanctuary, a gothic concrete structure during the time we were there. I served on a search committee for the senior minister who presided for the significant time that we were in Riverside. The senior minister of the church when we joined was Denton Jerow. Denton, incidentally, became a neighbor of ours on Prince Albert Drive when he retired and built a home just across the street from us; we were well-acquainted with him. The minister whom we searched for when Denton decided to retire was T. Franklyn Hudson, who was the minister of the First Presbyterian Church in Oakland before he came to Riverside and spent nearly twenty years as the senior minister of the Calvary Presbyterian Church. The three choir directors for whom I sang and became well acquainted with were Helge Pearson, Roberta Bitgood and Jack Schneider, and each one of those added considerably to my musical education. All of this early exposure led to other kinds of activities. Evelyn became fairly active, in spite of the fact that we had two young adopted children at the time, in Children's League of Riverside. That organization was associated with the community hospital, Riverside Community Hospital. The primary purpose of Children's League was to furnish the children's wing of the hospital with amenities to make a hospital stay for children more enjoyable and less of a harrowing experience. There were opportu nities for social activities for young children, and their mothers. 121 Kendrick: We adopted Janet, our daughter, in December of 1949. Her birthdate is October 15, 1949. We adopted her brother, Douglas, in June of 1952, and his birthdate is March 10, 1952. So by 1952, when a lot of these activities that I'm describing were bubbling along, we had these two- and less than one-year-olds to take care of, plus a new home on Prince Albert Drive. We were really quite busy and active and happy. It was a good time of our lives, to be thoroughly incorporated in the Riverside city, its life, and activities. I was busy with my work at the experiment station. Town and Gown Tensions; Explaining the University to the Community Kendrick: We weren't ignoring our university activities; there was the active group called Campus CLub, which I have described earlier and in which Evelyn was active. The Campus CLub was important in the lives of members of the Citrus Experiment Station because through their hospitality committee, Christmas parties, and summer picnics the club fostered the family nature of our relatively small group of University people. Well, Campus Club and the Citizens' University Committee were both seeking ways to make the development of the College of Letters and Science at Riverside a happy experience. An outgrowth of those groups, which didn't replace either one, was Town and Gown. We had a Town and Gown organization to develop, and that was also a fun experience. The only difficulty was that there was a lot of eagerness from the town people to become a part of it but not very much participation from the new college faculty. There was pretty good participation by the experiment station people, but I would say there was meager attendance at Town and Gown events by the college faculty. Lage: As you've described the new faculty in earlier interviews, I can see they might not enter eagerly into the community. Kendrick: Well, they were young, and they were oriented towards their own academic development and career. I have to say that I think there was a little bit of academic snobbery; they felt they were a little bit above those town people who were working for a living. [laughs] Lage: Perhaps they came from a more urban setting — Kendrick: Well, it was not only that. I think there was an incompatability in conversations. It was easy to get angry discourses going between someone who felt that they wanted to socialize the city, 122 Kendrick: wanted to bay the municipal power supply, buy out Southern California Edison and turn over the utilities to a municipally- owned organization. I mention that because it became quite an issue in the city. One of the early problems that Provost Watkins and his administrative colleagues had was to calm down some city fathers about what kind of radicalized faculty they were assembling on the Riverside campus, who seemed to want to bring communism and socialism to this quiet community, which had been getting along very comfortably all these years. Lage: But at least that does show some interest in community affairs, if the faculty was interested — Kendrick: Well, there were several activists in the sociology department, but that's their profession. They search around for these opportunities to try and change [laughing] the structures. I always chuckled a bit about this because of all the eagerness that communities show, usually making a lot of effort to get a university or a college campus established in their community without realizing the full impact of living with a university as a neighbor. Once it's there, it's often an uncomfortable relationship because it is the nature of the faculties to be a bit disrespectful of traditional institutions. They are a free- thinking collection of people; like Judge Bork* in his writings, he's provocative and he challenges. Faculties, if they're any good, are provocative. They're not necessarily comfortable with the status quo unless it involves their own welfare, in which case they're well entrenched and defend that status vigorously. They don't want any monkeying around with those kinds of changes for themselves. But as far as somebody else's situation is concerned, or a city government or what-have-you, they (some few activists) want to get in and change things so that in their minds everybody gets treated fair and equal. Lage: Did you find yourself in a role of mediator, or someone who explained the — Kendrick: I found myself in a role of defender of the University, but not in the sense that I defended everything it did. What I was trying to do was explain what the University was, and that they should be glad that they had the academic experience introduced into their midst. I was a person who felt that not everything that we did in the name of the University or the name of the faculty was necessarily correct or right, but I spent a lot of time trying to broaden the perspective of my colleagues in the * The congressional hearings on the nomination of Robert Bork to the IKS. Supreme Court were taking place at the time of this interview. 123 Kendrick: community and suggest to them that the members of the faculty had every right to express their individual opinions. And that that was -i valuable freedom which the citizens ought to cherish. A lot of my business and agricultural friends had pretty conservative Republican attitudes. It was sort of a "Yes, sir, no, sir," attitude about things, and law and order was at the top of their list of priorities. Obedience and subservience to authority were sort of the order of the day, and you did what the boss told you to do. Those attitudes are not held in very high regard by a faculty. I spent a good deal of my time both socially and in other arenas trying to interpret what the faculty was and why it was important and proper for them to be questioning traditional policies as well as traditional activities. Lage: This must have given you great experience for your later work as vice president. Kendrick: Well, I think it did. I felt rather strongly at Riverside that the University was being maligned unnecessarily and that the University was more than a football team and a basketball team. The Town and Gown did a lot to help in that regard; we had a lot of very fun social events. It was not an organization where we attempted to hold erudite discussions and meetings, but it was an organization which had social events at least twice a year, always well attended. The climate of Riverside was such that fall gatherings could be held outside in one of the town member's large yard. They were looked forward to, particularly by the town people, and I always felt it was too bad that more of my college faculty colleagues didn't attend so that they could engage in informal discourse and arguments. I thought they'd be better understood if they would just explain themselves. I had a colleague in biochemistry, who tended to be a real nonconformist as far as the traditional policies and values in society were concerned — that is, traditional as far as Riverside was concerned. I used to remind him that he lived in a community of people who were not all working at the University, and I said, "If we could just get the faculty to explain to their neighbors why they think what they do is important to them, and begin to try and translate what it is that makes the University tick, I think we'd be much better understood. Have you ever tried to explain to your neighbor why it's important to study the translocation of 2,4-D ions across a membrane in a plant? Trying to explain, in your neighbor's terms, what it is that drives you to have an interest in that kind of investigation?" 124 Kendrick: Well, that's only illustrative of the kinds of things that I think faculty are not good at. They don't explain why professional interests drive them with such dedication into these studies. I think they sell short the ability of non-academic people to comprehend those sorts of things if they just explain to them. Riverside was not unique in having some strained relationships with individual members of the faculty, but there was a general acceptance of the University as a whole, and Provost Watkins was such a lovable person that he could calm almost any apprehension that would arise. Free Speech Days at Riverside Kendrick: You can imagine that when the free speech activities came along, in the early and mid-sixties, the events that were happening at Berkeley at that time were not solely confined to Berkeley. The other campuses began to stir, too. [laughs] I recall a request from the Young Communist League to hold a meeting on the University campus. I don't recall specifically when it was, but I would guess it was in the mid- sixties — '64, '65 — right about the time that Clark Kerr was having all kinds of trouble convincing the Regents that denial of free speech was going to cause more problems than acquiesing and at least trying to control it. Well, the event that was proposed at Riverside was a particularly controversial event. There was a lot of strong feeling about staging this communist speaker to talk about whatever was on his mind at the time. I think I was in the Kiwanis CLub then. (I joined Kiwanis with some degree of reluctance in 1962. I had been approached to join Kiwanis Club much earlier than that by one of my closest friends in the department, Dr. Merrill Wallace, who had been a member of Kiwanis Club for all the years that he was in the department. He was another one of these who moved easily in the community. I kind of followed Merrill's lead, because I regarded his activities and advice rather importantly.) I recall spending a lot of time trying to explain to ay Kiwanis friends that scheduling a communist talk on the campus was not necessarily a bad thing, that it could lead to an exposure of the fallacies of communism a lot easier than trying to suppress them and keeping them in the dark. I said, "Don't overlook the fact that we have a lot of refugees from communist countries around here, and they're just dying to undress this person. " 125 Kendrick: Well, the event was ultimately scheduled over loud protests from every quarter, and that's precisely what happened. We had a member in our department who was a combination laboratory technician-graduate student, who had escaped communist domination in World War II. Lage: From what country? Kendrick: Yugoslavia. He had been captured in World War II and forced to serve in the Russian Army. He was the most violent anti- communist person I ever saw, and I think he even joined the John Birch Society. I said, "Well, I can understand John being a member of the John Birch Society because he had had excruciatingly difficult experiences with communists and communist domination." One thing I found out was that those refugees from the communist countries came out of the woodwork at that meeting, and they really laced into this person who was expounding the virtues of communism and the communist way of life. It was a real eye- opener, I thought, to the value of free speech, which a lot of people had feared would result in a pied piper reaction. So to my Kiwanis colleagues I said, "You sell the academic community short if you think they're a bunch of pied piper mice and children. They don't follow just because somebody says 'Come on and I'll lead you.' Their life is spent questioning established dogma, and if they're any good as faculty members, they'll study the issue very carefully before they arrive at any particular commitment. " Membership in Community Organizations Kendrick: Well, backing up a little bit, Evelyn's activities in Children's League and Tick-Tockers (a mothers and daughters organization for community service) led to her being asked to join the Junior Aid, a young women's group composed of wives and single women associated with the active social structure of the community. Membership was coveted by many of the young ladies because of its social status. That was not true of Evelyn, -however. That organization later became affiliated with the national Junior League group and changed its name to the Junior League of Riverside. It is an organization which raises money for good causes. You'll recall I earlier said that it was in one of these Junior-Aid-sponsored follies, a fundraiser, that the quartet I was a part of appeared. 126 Kendrick: Well, that led to further exposure to a little broader-based collection of Riverside people and citizens, and placed us cr.ce again in another social structure of the town. It broadened our acquaintances even further. As I had mentioned earlier, I had finally yielded to the pressure to join Kiwanis dub in 1962. I had resisted doing it because of their attendance requirement. I was out of town a good deal with my professional activities, and I felt that I wasn't going to be able to maintain their attendance requirements easily. But because I had so many friends, both through the church and through the Victoria Country Club, which we joined primarily for golf and swimming, in the late fifties I gave in and joined them in Kiwanis membership. My closest friend, Sheldon Pouley, now deceased, who was a businessman in Riverside, and Cub Callis, who lived across the street from us and worked for the school system, said to ce one day, "You don't have to do anything if you join the Kiwanis Club. Just attend the luncheons." I mistakenly believed him. Within about a month, I was introducing the speaker, and another month I was the song leader, aided by Homer Chapman, who was the pianist for our quartet, as well as for Kiwanis. He was also a long-time Kiwanian, another person who mixed well in town, and a member of the Calvary Presbyterian Church. He was chairman of the soils department and was Dan Aldrich's chair at the time Dan Aldrich was in the department. It seemed that my notoriety as a quartet member dictated that I should become the song leader at Kiwanis, so with Homer at the piano, I felt that would be easy to do; Homer could cover up almost any mistake that a person made because he was such a good pianist. Anyway, within about six weeks, following the advice that I didn't have to do anything in Kiwanis, I found myself more than just a little active in the club. That led to a broader exposure of acquaintanceship; we had the usual events that Kiwanis (Hubs have. I ultimately found myself on the board of directors for the club, and at the time I had to resign and move to Berkeley as the vice president, I was the first vice president of the club, slated to move into the presidency in the following year. So 1968 extracted me from that particular commitment, which I had been looking forward to. When I moved to Berkeley, I checked in with the Kiwanis dub at Berkeley and went to one meeting and found that it was not anything like the club I had left. It was the last time I've had any affiliation with any service club. 127 Evelyn's School Board Service Kendrick: Back to Riverside. In 1964, there was a vacancy that occurred on the Riverside City School Board. On our street, Prince Albert Drive, there was a good representation from the school system of Riverside. Bill Noble, president of the Riverside City Community College lived two doors from us, and a little further down the street lived Bruce Miller, who was the superintendent of the city schools. Cub Callis, in charge of construction for the school system, lived across the street from us. I have already mentioned that Denton Jerow, the retired minister of Calvary Presbyterian Church, lived across the street from us. A long time acquaintance, Robert Metcalf, who was chairman of the Department of Entomology at this time, was a next-door neighbor. Bob is now at the University of Illinois and is about ready to retire. He was the golfer who got me into playing golf. Jim Pitts, who was a professor of chemistry and at that time the chairman of the Department of Chemistry, also lived on our street. The section of Prince Albert Drive where we lived was a dead-end street, so it was a self-contained neighborhood. It was a street where the people had a strong feeling of community; everybody on the street would participate in Fourth of July events, when we would close off the street and have a street party. Contrary to the kind of busy, involved urban living that some people endure, this was not the case on that street. Everybody was well acquainted with everybody else. In 1964, when a vacancy on the Riverside City School Board occurred, Evelyn was asked to fill that vacancy. We were both surprised and flattered by the request. Evelyn was a little hesitant to accept, but I could see that she was interested in serving on the board. I said, "That's a good idea." So she accepted the invitation and began to serve as a member of the five-person Riverside City School Board. Thus began another exposure to a broader aspect of community activities. She served with much dedication and gave a lot of time to her board duties. Our children were old enough to not need close attention. They were still in school and somewhat embarrassed by having their mother on the city school board. When her term expired in 1966, she was then required to run for election, which was a new experience for us, and one that she was not really thrilled about, but she did decide to stand for election, nevertheless. She ran with the very popular president of the board, whose name is Art Littleworth. Art is a lawyer with the firm Best, Best, and Kreiger, a leading law firm in Riverside. 128 Kendrick: Arthur Littlew or th was a very compassionate, competent, and intelligent leader of that board. It was about 1965 when a de facto segregated school in Riverside was burned. It was never proven that it was caused by arson, but most people were rather certain that it was. That brought to immediate attention Riverside's problem with segregation. There were two kinds of segregation of schools in Riverside: one was Hispanic, or Mexican, and the other was black. These schools were not constructed to be segregated, but because they were built in neighborhoods that became dominated by either Hispanic or Mexican residents, on the one hand, or black, on the other, they became de facto segregated schools. It was the black school that got burned. Lage: And this was the time of the Watts riot, wasn't it? Kendrick: It was about the time of the Watts riots, yes. The school that got burned was the one that our youngsters went to. Then the question became, what to do? We could rebuild the school as it was and go on as if nothing had taken place, or try to do something about the segregation. This board, with its leadership and the school administration, really moved out ahead of most of California at that time and designed a one-way busing system to move the students into a more integrated school experience. I must admit that it was not all spontaneous on the part of the school board; they had a lot of noisy sessions in which the black community was saying, "You're not going to force us back into this situation again." So there was a lot of acrimony. Wilson Riles at the time was a member of the State Department of Education, and he came down and helped counsel the board in how to handle this problem. The one-way busing system was designed to disperse the minorities into the previously white-dominated schools, and the school system and the board members spent an entire summer counseling with the parents of the youngsters in those receiving schools, preparing them for this event. It was a tremendous effort. When it came time to get the busing underway, it went just as smoothly as it could, with no adverse events that we were aware of. Lage: Did this solve the problem of the Hispanic schools? Kendrick: I was going to come to that. The Mexicans did not really want to be dispersed. They were the least enthusiastic about losing their sense of community. The two areas where these schools were segregated were not close to one another. The Hispanic Mexicans lived in an area called Casa Blanca. While it was not an area that was very affluent, it had a lot of amenities that they were proud of. It did have a feeling of community. I think there was some sympathy in trying to preserve that sense of community, but 129 Kendrick: of course the commitment to desegregate the segregated schools was pretty strong, and to the extent that they could, they bused them into a more integrated situation. That was a very indelible experience as far as the board members and those of us who were living with that situation were concerned. Riverside got a lot of publicity over it, and I think it was a feather in their caps to be able to say that they faced up to an issue and really tried to do something about it. Well, Evelyn was re-elected. It was not a very close election. And she was embarked upon her first fully elected four-year term and really enjoying it quite thoroughly. One year she and a school board colleague found themselves active in the United Fund drive; they co-chaired the residential campaign. That was just another example of the kind of community involvement that we've engaged in. An Unexpected Job Offer from President Hitch Kendrick: Then came the rather unexpected invitation to me to meet with President [Charles] Hitch and Harry Wellman one afternoon following a meeting of this Capital Outlay Review Board [CORE] — one of the systemwide administrative committees on which I served by virtue of my vice chairmanship of the Academic Council and Assembly. The board was chaired by Harry Wellman. That meeting, I think, occurred sometime in late February or early March. President Hitch asked me if I would consider joining his staff as the vice president, agricultural sciences. Lage: This actual invitation was not something you were prepared for? Kendrick: No. I didn't have any idea why he wanted to meet with me. My mind was on, as I think I've said earlier, what was going to happen to the College of Agricultural Science at Riverside. Knowing that Boyce was going to retire July 1, and in February his successor had not been designated, my focus was on that position, because I was a department chair with five years' experience and a lot of activity on the campus. I really was concerned about who might be the next leader, and was fully prepared to say, "Yes, I'll do it," if somebody wanted to ask me. In those days extreme search committees were not used, and they didn't advertise for applicants all over the United States. Faculty advisory committees were used to advise the administration when they were trying to identify candidates. That was pretty standard. But there was not a lot of 130 Kendrick: advertising. Candidates generally didn't apply for positions. These search and advise committees functioned confidentially and quietly assembled a list of potential candidates, made evaluations, after looking at the curriculum vitaes, and all pertinent information they could gather about each candidate. Ultimately, the committee would come to some conclusions and report to whomever appointed them in the first place. I participated on several of those myself, such as for the vice chancellor for Riverside and others. They are very helpful committees as far as administration is concerned because they do the work for you. They screen and rank the candidates. I presume Hitch and Wellman used one of these committees, but I had no idea that I was on their list of candidates or even being considered for that position. What Harry Wellman said to me at the 00 RB meeting was, "Charlie Hitch would like to meet with you about four o'clock this afternoon." We were meeting here in Berkeley. This was in one of these periods when I was all over the state nearly every week. The CORB plan of meetings in the winter and early spring was to go to every campus and listen to the campus present their capital needs for the next budget. Well, when Harry said, "President Hitch would like to meet you at four o'clock," I thought, "Oh no, what have I done now?" [laughter] Hitch had been appointed president in January of 1968. The previous year Harry Wellman had been acting president after dark Kerr had been relieved of his presidency the previous January in 1967. That was the period when I was fairly active in the Academic Council and on the statewide budget committee. Receiving this invitation to join President Hitch's administration at that time kind of hit me right between the eyes, and I said, "Well, I'd better think about it." It sounded terrific at the time; I was so surprised that I had to reflect upon it. And of course it meant a major change was being proposed in our lives, because we were thoroughly involved in our Riverside connections, and I felt badly that it would disrupt Evelyn's activities. She was just nicely launched in the official activities of the school board and a recognized citizen in the community. But that will be the next story. It's obvious that I decided to accept and moved into that vice presidency the first of April of 1968. Lage : It's interesting that with this method of selection, there's no interview process. Kendrick: There wasn't any interview — 131 Lage: To see what your view of matters were, and what direction you wanted to take it in — Kendrick: You're right. I often reflected and wondered a little bit about that. That's certainly not the way you go about appointing people now. Now you bring in your final candidates for interviews, and let them make their own case. But I've often wondered if Charlie Hitch had any real thoughts about where he wanted the agricultural program to go, or if he had any particular thing that he wanted accomplished. I think he knew that it was a fairly large and significant internal organization, but he had Harry Wellman to advise him about the agricultural needs and how to put its administration together. He had also at that time identified whom he wanted as his successor to Harry Wellman as the vice president, and that was Jack Oswald. Jack Oswald at that time was president of the University of Kentucky. Jack, as I related in an earlier interview, was one of my father's early graduate students, and another plant pathologist. The two of us had had a close, almost family, relationship. So as far as Charlie Hitch was concerned, by bringing to a very top-level administrative position somebody who understood agriculture, he didn't really have to pay personal attention to that area of his responsibility. All he needed was somebody down at the operational level who came from agriculture and, I guess, who was not controversial. I think at that point, I was pretty noncontroversial because nobody knew what position I would take on agricultural issues. Lage: Even yourself? Kendrick: I hadn't even thought about it. I described for President Hitch what I was trying to do with the department at Riverside to broaden its outlook on its immediate problems, to introduce a capacity to pursue the basic aspects of research that were related to the department, and to pay attention to its mission. But I really hadn't given much thought to where I felt the University's total agricultural program ought to be headed. There was a little discussion about that in the interview [laughs], and I suppose if I had been a complete bust in terms of not being very articulate, completely devoid of ideas, that he could have backed off without saying, "Well, I think you're the one we'd like to have run this program." But I have reflected a little bit on my experience with CORE and some discussions with Harry Wellman — Lage: Recently? 132 Kendrick: No, not recently, but in trying to figure out "why me?" I'm really kind of ahead of my Riverside experience here, but not too much — I wanted to mention that in addition to the Kiwanis dub. the church, the Victoria dub, that I was trying to be a good father for my son. I was active in the YMCA and the Indian Guide Program, which was a father-son program, in Little League baseball, in trout fishing, and other activities — Lage : I don't know how you did it all, frankly. Kendrick: — that fathers and mothers try to participate in with their children. Well, you do it because you're young. You don't run out of energy. When I look back on it now, I just don't have the energy to put into that sort of thing anymore. But it actually was a fun time of our lives. We were totally engaged in useful community associations as well as in a lot of fun social events and a very satisfying professional career. Now, to finish the thought that I had on my reflections on some conversations with Harry Wellman. Most of us thought that the obvious candidate to succeed Maurice Peterson as the University dean of agriculture was the dean at Davis, James Meyer. We didn't quite understand why things dragged on so long and why his appointment was held up. One time during a lunch hour, Harry and I were walking somewhere, and he asked me where I thought the headquarters of the division ought to be located. Then Harry went on and said, "Do you think it could function effectively at Davis?" I said, "Well, I suppose it could function — " I recall very vividly my response. I said, "I expect it could function effectively almost anywhere you put it, and certainly could operate well from Davis. " I said, "I think there is one problem with locating it at Davis, and that is that Riverside will feel that they always are going to get what's left over. That may not be the case, but the appearance and the perception is going to be there. They have struggled mightily to try and get out from under the notion that Riverside is sort of second-best and it would like to be recognized on its own without comparisons. If the headquarters for the division were at Davis, there is just no way to avoid the fact that it will appear to be disadv ant aged. At least where the division's office is now, in the President's Office, Riverside feels it has equal standing with Berkeley and Davis when its needs are being considered." And, of course, it was well known that Al Boyce as the director of the Citrus Experiment Station, and the dean of the college, was very persuasive and successful in presenting his case for resources, often outbidding the other two campuses for support of a program, a position, or a building. 133 Kendrick: And then that was the end of the conversation. Harry didn't say, "I think you' re right." He was j ust f ishir.g. And I, in reflection, think the position of vice president was offered to Jim Meyer, who, true to his conviction to this day, felt that the headquarters for the division ought to be on the Davis campus, and made that a condition of his acceptance of the appointment. Lage: But you don't know that for a fact? Kendrick: I've never talked to Jim about this, and I'm just speculating about that matter. Jim was never very reluctant to express his views that the Davis campus ought to house the headquarters of the division. And as a matter of fact, at the tail end of my activity, we had planned to move parts of the University's division administration to the Davis campus, with support from President David Gardner. We'd better not get into that today. Lage: Harry Wellman apparently didn't want the division to move to Davis? Kendrick: No. Harry did not want to headquarter it at Davis. And for what reason I don't know — maybe the same reason that I have indicated. I think it's a persuasive reason, and I have always felt that the division's leadership, top leadership, needed to be a part of the President's Office as long as there was a committment to have it led by a vice president. #1 On the other hand, Claude Hutchison, the longtime dean of agriculture, specifically set out to make Davis the headquarters for the agriculture program of the University. They went so far as to design the headquarters building for the university dean on the Davis campus. The buildings never got built, but all of the plans were in motion for it. I think I've read some of the history that points that out. There are a lot of long memories in Davis, and they have felt they were promised that agriculture's management and leadership would be on that campus, and that it was blocked or stopped for various reasons. Fart of it was financial, part of it was political, and part was intrigue, I'm sure. But nevertheless, there was a change in plans, and it's always been a source of tension between the systemwide administration of the agricultural program and the Davis campus administration. And there has been an interesting tension also in Riverside, as people loyal to that campus strongly advise and work diligently to be sure that the headquarters does not move to the Davis campus. Lage: Where does the Berkeley campus fit into all of this? 13A Kendrick: Berkeley tends to support the view that the headquarters ought to be in University Hall, but they don't feel nearly as threatened by it. I think it's because the agricultural program or. the Berkeley campus is a relatively small part of the total campus program. At Riverside, it's a significant part of the total activity, and if they were to somehow lose their resources, or have them cut back, or not have any sympathy towards their needs, they'd be in real trouble. 135 VII THE FINAL YEARS AT RIVERSIDE Representing the University-Wide Faculty during Years of Turbulence [Date of Interview: October 6. 1987] ## Kendrick: I want to talk further about that last year or two in Riverside to explain why I didn't arrive in the systemwide administration with any fixed agenda. In reviewing the record, I find that my statewide senate responsibilities were a little more extensive than I earlier had indicated. In '66 — '67, I was a member of the Academic Council. And then in '67-'68, I was the vice chairman of the council, expecting during '68- '69 that I would chair the council and assume all the responsibilities that the systemwide senate chairman had with the President's Office and his administration. The duties were often divided between the chair and the vice chairman in such a way that they kept both of us busy, but not necessarily by simultaneously attending the same meetings except for meetings of the Regents, the Academic Council and the Academic Assembly. Robley Williams was the chairman of the Academic, Council in '67-'68. Robley was professor of biochemistry, and a member of the faculty in the Virus Laboratory here in Berkeley. Both of us were appointed members on the administration's Budget Review Committee and the Capital Outlay Review Board. Those bodies were busy in the late fall and spring because the University was building the record for the next year's budget requests. The faculty participated in that process through the appointments of the chair and the vice chair to those administrative committees. That experience provided me with a good deal of practical exposure to just how the University budget was constructed and who made the decisions concerning it. I quickly found out that Vice President Wellman was the one who had great influence in the outcome of the President's decisions. I had known from previous observations that he was really a very good administrator and quite competent in sorting out the real needs of the entire University. 136 f* Lage: I would like you to make a few comments about your experience with the Board of Regents before we get into the vice presidency. Kendrick: I was mostly a sideline observer as the vice chairman of the Academic Council in '67-'68, which was the year following Clark Kerr's dismissal as president, in January, 1967, soon after Ronald Reagan took office as governor. Lage: Harry Wellman was acting president in 1967, and Charles Hitch came as president in January, 1968. Kendrick: Yes. Charlie Hitch was at that time vice president for business and finance. The Regents initiated a search for a successor to Kerr, which took a while to complete. So during that year Harry occupied the President's Office, in kind of a dual capacity as his own vice president as well as the acting president of the University. He never was given the title of President of the University, however. The decision to appoint Charlie Hitch president was made at a meeting of the Regents at UCLA that I attended. Lage: Did the Academic Council have any kind of advisory role in the selection? Kendrick: They certainly did. Not the council per se, but the faculty did. There was a specially appointed group of faculty who served on that selection committee and participated in the review of candidates. So faculty participation was strong even at that time. After Vice President Charles Hitch was asked to assume the presidency on the first of January, 1968, he asked Harry Wellman to help him as his vice president until he could identify a more permanent appointment. Harry did, but Harry had officially re tired by the time, so in a sense he was recalled to active duty. All of this took place at the same time that there was a vacancy in the university deanship of agriculture, which was the period when Harry was the acting president. He wasn't about, I guess, to make any permanent commitment to the administration of agriculture until the presidency situation was settled. Which accounts, as we've said earlier, for why the vacancy just sort of disappeared from sight — at least in my mind it did. Charlie quickly assembled a group of vice presidents to support his administration. I don't know whether initially there were seven or nine of us; there were quite a few. At one time we had nine vice presidents. We used to refer to the fact that we had a baseball team of vice presidents. At another time in my career we had a basketball team of vice presidents, when we were down to five. We never had fewer than five vice presidents during my time in the President's Office. 137 Lage: These changes were made by the various presidents? Kendrick: The changes occurred with the various presidents, to reflect their concepts of the kind of vice presidential administration they wanted. As I said earlier, Jack Oswald was asked by President Hitch to return to the University of California as his executive vice president. Jack's selection as executive vice president, at the time I was invited to become the vice president for agriculture, had some persuasive influence in my own decision because I looked forward to working with him as a part of the President's Office. Lage: You went way back with him. Kendrick: Yes, our relationship went back to about 1940, when he arrived to enroll in graduate school at Davis. So it was an added inducement for me to make up my mind to take the vice presidency. Producing an Academic Plan for Riverside Kendrick: But before we get into the vice presidency, I want to describe another activity at Riverside which kept my attention away from the vacancies in the university-wide administration. What was happening at Riverside kept my attention focused there because it was of more immediate concern and had a greater potential impact on my future role on the Riverside campus. Within a year or two after Ivan Hinderaker was appointed to succeed Herman Spieth as chancellor of the Riverside campus, he appointed a committee to draw up an academic plan for Riverside, and I was asked to serve on that committee. That committee was chaired by Professor [Donald] Sawyer, who was a professor of chemistry in the Department of Chemistry, in the Division of Physical Sciences. That was an experience that I valued highly because it complemented the assignment that Chancellor Spieth had given me earlier in 1959 to design a physical development plan for the campus which planned to reach a student body size of 5,000 students, without overlooking the fact that in due course it would go to 10,000 students. Participating in a committee that was giving attention to academic planning, which really should have been completed before discussing a plan for physical development, was an opportunity to add to my experience. It was also a bonus to me because the committee membership was drawn mostly from the faculty of the College of Letters and Science. There were one or two of us from 138 Kendrick: agriculture; we were called aggie faculty. It also gave me an opportunity to think more deeply and more comprehensively about undergraduate education. Some of us traveled to other institutions to look at some innovative programs. I recall going to Wisconsin with a colleague to look at some University Extension programs they had back there. We produced what I thought was really a challenging and good report, but it didn't cause much more than a ripple on the pond. Lage: Why was that, do you think? Kendrick: I wish I knew. Lage: Did you propose anything that was unusual or — ? Kendrick: No, but I guess we were too early for our times. What we really were proposing was some emphasis on general education. And since undergraduate education is the hot topic today — Lage: They might go back to that plan. Kendrick: No, the one thing the faculty does not do well is to go back to earlier reports. They prefer to look ahead. They think highly of libraries, but they don't think very highly of past academic plans. The plans are only valuable as historical records. Lage: So it was more of a learning experience for you than — Kendrick: I think the assignment was good for the committee members, but the plan didn't have much impact on our colleagues who were expected to implement it. That's a peculiarity of plans, and it's followed me in all of my experience. Academic plans have a brief period of influence, and the biggest influence they have is on the people who develop the plan. If the people who were engaged in developing the plan wind up with some administrative responsibility, then the plan may have an impact. But if you're just producing a plan for somebody else who has the responsibility for implementation, forget it. I don't think it's worth the time it takes to put it all together. Lage: And producing an academic plan was your first charge, you said, as you came into the vice presidency. Kendrick: That's right, and I've got some things to say about that because it proves my point. 139 Value of Shared Governance Kendrick: Well, that committee was followed soon by another committee that Chancellor Hinderaker put together to study the reorganization of the College of Letters and Science. The College of Letters and Science still consisted of the four major divisions, that was put together by Provost Watkins and his advisory group. But the college seemed overly organized for the numbers of students enrolled at that time, so there needed to be some sort of amalgamation, and the chancellor instituted the committee to study the potential amalgamation of the units. That committee came up with a recommendation that I thought was brilliant and supported thoroughly. I didn't have any direct input to the committee because I was not asked to serve on it. I would willingly have done so, if asked, but I was pretty involved in university-wide responsibilities then, so it's easy to understand why these kinds of assignments were passed around as much as possible. I think I recall that we discussed earlier why a few of us became so involved in so many things at Riverside. It was because the campus was small, the faculty was relatively of a small size, the numbers of senior faculty were even smaller, but the senate organization and the administrative needs were just as complicated and the committees were just as numerous as they were on large campuses where they had a lot of people to share in those many responsibilities. You would never find somebody on the Berkeley campus or the UCLA campus being exposed to as many things as I was on the Riverside campus. The fact that we didn't have enough people to go around to serve in those different capacities at Riverside meant that a few of us had to serve in a lot of different capacities from time to time. And in the long run, it worked out to my advantage by giving me a practical education in most aspects of how the University runs, how it's organized, and how decision-making evolves. It was a better orientation and practical training ground than I could have received in any well-organized managerial workshop, that you might find in a business school or another group responsible for training administrators. Lage : Your background touched on every area in this system of shared governance. Kendrick: Yes. It also gave me an understanding and appreciation for the value of the faculty, and the role that the faculty can play in the shared governance of the administration of the University of California. I have always held in high regard faculty participation in these kinds of decisions. The faculty doesn't make any decisions, but they sure let you know about bum decisions you might make, or try to persuade you into making decisions that — 140 Lage: They give a lot of formal advice. Kendrick: It's advise and consent, just like the U.S. Senate. It's advice you ignore at your peril. They can make life miserable for you if you treat them lightly, but there is no reason to do so. You recognize the faculty prejudices, and if you give them their chance to contribute, they'll respect you for it, and they'll understand if you have to make different choices. So I never felt that I was disadvantaged by taking things to the faculty and asking their participation in helping me administer the responsibility that I had. The College of Natural and Agricultural Sciences: Cons for Agricultural Research Pros and Kendrick: Well, the reorganization committee came up with a scheme to amalgamate all the science units into one college; all the science units, that is, except the Department of Psychology, which was an experimental psychology department rather than a social psychology group. They didn't want to foresake their liberal arts origin, I guess. Lage: They stayed with social sciences? Kendrick: They stayed with social sciences. But the recommendation, and ultimately the action, resulted in the formation of the College of Natural and Agricultural Sciences, which was euphemistically referred to in kind of an uncomplimentary way as the College of Nags. The units included in that college were taken both from the physical sciences and the life sciences. It included the departments of physics, chemistry, statistics, mathematics, geology, and since there were no departments in life sciences such as zoology, bacteriology, microbiology, or botany, it was incorporated as a Department of Biology. Lage: Did they departmentalize this later? Kendrick: Yes. Lage: But that was after your time. Kendrick: That was after my time. As a matter of fact, they later created a Department of Plant Sciences and moved all the botanists out of the biology group into the Department of Plant Sciences, so the Department of Plant Sciences at Riverside consists of experiment station horticulturalists, agronomists, pure botanists, plant physiologists, and the like. It is former Dean W. Mack Bugger's home department. 141 Kendrick: Well, I'm a little ahead of my story. That amalgamation was to take place July 1 of 1968. It's easy to understand why my attention was on what was going to happen at Riverside and how that was going to affect the Department of Plant Pathology, and how that might affect Jim Kendrick, and what role I might have in bringing that recommendation into fruition. Lage: What effect did the amalgamation eventually have on the experiment station? Kendrick: One of the assets of the amalgamation was that it involved the experiment station members of the College of Agriculture, the forerunner of the new college, in a viable undergraduate program for the first time. It brought a lot of attention to undergraduate education into that unit, because those units which were formerly in the life and physical sciences had large undergraduate enrollments, while the departments in the College of Agricultural Sciences had been largely concerned with graduate programs. Well, the viability of the College of Nags — Natural and Agricultural Sciences — was not threatened, but it certainly had an effect on its reception by both the agricultural members of the unit and the external farmer constituency which were accustomed to being served by the agricultural research group in the Citrus Experiment Station — which by that time had been renamed the Citrus Research Center. While this amalgamated organization was theoretically sound, in my judgment, it didn't result in very many practical accomplishments as far as agriculture was concerned, because I'm not aware of very many undergraduate students coming out of the College of Natural and Agricultural Sciences with a commitment to a career in the agricultural sciences. Lage: You didn't get many students to go on in graduate school under the agricultural program? Kendrick: No. There were a few people in agriculture already who did not have an undergraduate degree, who enrolled and got the Bachelor of Science degree in that college, but I don't think that we enticed very many students who had enrolled in that college as undergraduates to pursue agricultural subjects. Probably that was because the faculty in the agriculture departments didn't really participate very much in undergraduate instruction. So it was not just a lack of student interest; you can attribute some of the failure to reach undergraduates to the lack of undergraduate teaching participation by the older, traditional agricultural faculty, as well as the fact that those faculty members who came from the College of Letters and Science weren't about to suggest that their undergraduate students pursue agricultural subjects. They wanted the good students to go on in 142 Kendrick: their own fields of science. So all in all, the big challenge was to try and amalgamate into a productive unit two very different kinds of faculties. It was initially an organizational marriage of convenience rather than a rich educational experience. I thought this reorganized college was going to be first- class because it contained the elements of the kind of undergraduate preparation that I had had in Berkeley in the College of Letters and Science in the magnificent major called general curriculum. I never felt that I suffered any in my preparation for my career. Lage: Your comments remind me a little bit of some of the things Henry Vaux said about the College of Natural Resources, the formation of that. He had high hopes that the reorganization, restructur ing, would lead to a rethinking of subject matter, with more interdisciplinary thrusts. Kendrick: Didn1 t work. Lage: But people just went on as they had. The changes were structural, just an administrative reorganization. Kendrick: Exactly, it was an administrative convenience. That's about all it was. You're right. Henry is one of the wisest men I ever had the good fortune to have as a colleague. He's a keen observer. Lage: Yes, he is. Administrative Organization of College and Experiment Station Kendrick: The next problem facing this amalgamation was to find leadership. The traditional agricultural constituency was not all that thrilled about this amalgamation. They felt — it turns out they were right — that this would divert the attention of the faculty in the experiment station away from their needs. The amalgamation had another effect on the program of the experiment station in that the addition of new faculty in the experiment station took a little different twist because young men and women who were more compatible with the goals of College of Letters and Science-type faculty than they were with the fully committed research faculty that the experiment station had traditionally added to its faculty were recruited. Also, faculty are quick learners. They learn that they get ahea<' almost exclusively by how many good fundamental research papers they publish in their professional refereed journals, and 143 Kendrick: not how many field plots they put out, from which it is difficult to accumulate very many good professional journal articles. It's certainly possible to do so, but it takes a longer period of time to accomplish. You usually can have only one crop a year, or one birth cycle per year if you're working with farm animals. If you're a citrus breeder, you have to wait several years to get a crop and find out what you've got. That's not the kind of research program that gets you ahead in the academic world. So that had an influence on the attention that the faculty was giving to the citrus, ornamental, vegetable, field crop, and soil irrigation problems which characterized the southern Californian agriculture scene. The man ultimately selected to be the dean was Professor Willie Mack Dugger. It's not William; it's Willie. A professor of plant physiology, he came to Riverside from Florida to investigate the plant physiological disturbances caused by smog. So he really was brought there in an agricultural program. Lage: Was he part of that air pollution group? Kendrick: He was part of the Air Pollution Research Center — that was Mack's area of affiliation — but he also had a faculty appointment in the Division of Life Sciences. There again, we return to the small orbit that the academic community finds itself in sometimes, because Mack Dugger was a member of that plant physiology graduate course that Dan Aldrich and Jim Kendrick took in 1942 in Madison, Wisconsin. And you all ended up at the University in administrative roles. Yes. We didn't learn much administration while we were there in that particular course [laughter]. His appointment was not really received with much enthusiasm by the agricultural constituency because he was unknown to them. Even though he had as much agriculture background as I had, he wasn't fortunate enough to be identified with an agricultural department. He was in the Division of Life Sciences, while I was in an aggie department called plant pathology. If Kendrick: By that time the constituency persuaded Hinderaker and Wellman that they would be better off, when appointing Dean Boyce's successor, to separate the deanship from the associate directorship of the Agricultural Experiment Station. It was customary to have the dean and the associate director of the experiment station one and the same person. One of the University of California's confusing anomalies was that there was no director of the Citrus Research Center because the center was Lage: Kendrick : 144 Kendrick : merely one of the units of the University-wide Agricultural Experiment Station. Deans also carried the titles of associate director of the Agricultural Experiment Station serving under the director of the AES in a capacity similar to a member of a board of directors of the experiment station. The confusion developed because as I said there was no director of this Citrus Research Center, but rather an associate director University-wide, who was responsible for the local unit and who was resident at Riverside. The Citrus Research Center and its predecessor the Citrus Experiment Station had gained a worldwide reputation of its own. So it was often perceived by those outside the University as a separate unit from the University's Agricultural Experiment Station. Lage: It had more of an identity than just as a local unit of the Agricultural Experiment Station. Kendrick: It had an identity all its own. That provided confusion as far as our internal administration was concerned because we did not have multiple experiment stations, we only had units of the single University experiment station. The sign on the Citrus Research Center door said, "Associate Director of the Citrus Research Center and Agricultural Experiment Station." Visitors would be confused because they expected to meet the person in charge, who presumably was a director. Some would say, "Well, we're not really interested in seeing the associate director, we'd like to see the director. Where is he?" The answer was, "Well, the director is Clarence Kelly, and he's in Berkeley." So it was a tough thing for Al Boyce to deal with, and it was not really any easier for his successor to deal with. Lage: I would think the combination of the two jobs would be difficult, the deanship of the college and the associate directorship of the station. Kendrick: The way the responsibility is really discharged is that you have an associate dean for research and an associate dean for resident instruction. Lage: So there's really someone else who's running the Citrus Research Center. Kendrick: That's right. The dean and associate director has the overall responsibility but does not pay day-to-day attention to the affairs. of the experiment station. There is an associate dean to do that. Lage: So the Agricultural Experiment Station is a more centralized operation than the other units of the University. 145 Kendrick: Yes. It's really the only centralized research operation that the University maintains. Well, to solve the dilemma of the presumed lack of agricultural association that was attributed to Mack Bugger, the administration decided to ask Boysie Day, also a professor of plant physiology, who was a member of the Department of Horticulture, however, a fully acknowledged agricultural department, and who had a lot of field research experience, to assume the associate directorship. It separated the role of dean from associate director at Riverside, in contrast, to that which existed at Berkeley and Davis. It provided a bit of confusion because it was not really all that clear on what issues Associate Director Day sought Director Kelly's advice and on what issues he sought Mack Dugger's advice, and when he was responsible to Dugger and when he was responsible to Kelly. Boysie, being pretty much a self-starter and a very capable administrator on his own, kind of carved out his own path and made his own decisions. We'll get into that much later. Lage: These things must have been happening about the time you were taking over the statewide division. Kendrick: I had already taken over. It was not known who was going to be the dean at the time my appointment was made. Lage: Did you have a role in making that decision to have Boysie Day be associate director? Kendrick: No. I don't recall having any role in that, anyway, and I think I would remember that. That split responsibility was ultimately resolved, as I will describe later. At the time of my appointment [E. Gorton] Gort Linsley was the dean and associate director at Berkeley. He was a professor of entomology, and James Meyer, who later became the chancellor, was the dean and associate director of the experiment station at Davis. Jim was a professor of, I think, animal physiology, but his degree was in biochemistry, also from the University of Wisconsin. He escaped taking that same plant physiology course that we did, I think, otherwise we would have had a real coup. As a matter of fact, he was at Wisconsin after World War II, later than Dan and Mack and I. That separation of responsibilities was later solved when Director Kelly asked Boysie Day to come to Berkeley to be his assistant and to provide some assistance to him in administering the systemwide Agricultural Experiment Station. At that time the associate directorship of the experiment station returned to the dean at Riverside so we resumed the standard way of handling that dual responsibility of administration of the respective colleges and their respective units of the Agricultural Experiment 146 Kendrick: Station. With one person in charge, we didn't have to worry about who talked to whom about certain issues. Teaching Responsibilities and the Decline of Mission-Oriented Research Kendrick: That separation didn't exist more than two years time, but the agricultural constituency nevertheless was right in their concerns. The kind of mission orientation of the experiment station, I think, began to deteriorate. At that time, the close focus and attention to the agricultural field problems became more difficult for the faculty to handle because they had teaching responsibilities; they knew that their likelihood of producing productive research in field experimentation was lessened, and they were in a highly competitive environment to get their brownie points towards tenure, so that the orientation of their own research programs became more basic and more laboratory and greenhouse oriented. It was restored, to some extent, when Lowell Lewis assumed one of the associate deanships, with responsibility for the experiment station activities, under Mack Bugger, the dean. Mack assembled a good team. There were three of them: Nat [Nathaniel] Coleman, who was professor of soils, joined the dean's office, so between Mack Bugger, Nat Coleman, and Lowell Lewis, they had a real good team. And Lowell Lewis spent a good deal of time with the external constituency, trying to keep them, if not happy, at least satisfied that we were concerned about their problems. Lage: I can foresee a potential problem with the structure of Riverside, if the dean of this College of Natural and Agricultural Sciences was a physicist or chemist, who really had very little connection with agriculture. Kendrick: The constituency was really concerned about that. Lage: Bugger did have the connection. Kendrick: Yes. He was plant-oriented. Riverside does not have an animal program of any significance. Certainly not domestic animals. So it's a plant science-oriented activity, with heavy emphasis on pest management and toxicology and biotechnology. So you are quite right. If the dean were a physicist or a pure chemist, or a systematic botanist, the constituency would wonder, "What is going on now? We've lost agriculture." Kendrick: Well, I think that puts ma back to Berkeley, when Br. Wellman asked if I would come by and visit with President Hitch, Co <-* Co C TO 03 «- 3 ft ^ ft H- «- 3 < TO g fX, (B " n' s' en 3*«5 H- la * <-r TO ft- O TO O •-tj i-h O 3 O Q. (t o cr n 1-1 o 3 W O 3 3 09 CD Co (D 3 cn (B H- CO CL n ?S 13 (B rr CL n 11 3" H* CO O 11 7? M • (B co 03 = 1-1 H- O. rr O 3 cu CKJ 3 - CL O H- 3" O 3 fB I (B 1 •I (B ?r cn H- H- 3 CL cn fB v. g rt po 11 C_ M C n 3 en m ft -. n 3* (D (D i-( f? n o 1-1 7? 147 VIII VICE PRESIDENT FOR AGRICULTURAL SCIENCES— EARLY CONCERNS President Hitch's Call for a Long-Range Academic Plan [Date of interview: October 13, 1987] ## Lage : Today's October 13, 1987, and this is our seventh interview with James Kendrick. Today we're going to talk about your appointment to head up the Division of Agricultural Sciences, and the environment that you found yourself in. Kendrick: All right. We have, I think, discussed the physical setting in which I was first introduced into consideration for the systemwide vice presidency. That led me to go home and ponder briefly just what that meant in terms of changing my life, lifestyle, and career direction — which I pondered for about a week or so. And as I think I've mentioned, it caused some disruption in Evelyn's life, because she at that time was active in the school system in Riverside, as a member of the board of education. My discussion with President Hitch about what he really expected from a vice president was not very revealing. After I agreed to accept his invitation to join his administration as the vice president of agricultural sciences (a restoration from the university dean title to the title of vice president), he made the statement that the division needed a statement of purpose and a long-range academic plan. How long? As long as it was prudent to forecast. So the first thing I worked on with Harry Wellman, Clarence Kelly, who was the director of the experiment station, and George Alcorn, who was the director of the Agricultural Extension Service, was a statement of what the division was, what it encompassed, and a little bit about what it intended to do in the future. That statement served as a guideline, at least a statement of reference, for the division. I don't have a copy of it, but it exists in the system. 148 Operating a Centralized Unit within the Decentralized University System Kendrick: The thing to remember about the Division of Agricultural Sciences, as it was known then, is that it was the last remaining university- wide academic unit, following the decentralization that dark Kerr instituted during his regime, in which campuses were given the authority and the autonomy to manage campus affairs. I had not had much experience with trying to manage — I didn't have any experience trying to manage a program that covered more than one campus, in an environment that was dominated by decentralization and campus autonomy expressed ir. each campus chancellor's involvement in all things that were located on their campus. So that was the first environmental difference with which I had to deal. Lage: Did this lead to unclear lines of authority? Kendrick: Yes. It also led to the fact that I had to work out some processes and techniques to deal with shared authority, particularly for the experiment station personnel involving chancellors and deans. On each campus, the head of the agricultural program held two titles — dean and associate director of the experiment station. When that individual was operating as a dean, the authority for his actions was his campus, and his chief administrative officer was the chancellor. When that individual was functioning as an associate director of the experiment station, the authority was the vice president, through the director of the experiment station. Nearly all the personnel in the experiment station located on the campuses were jointly appointed in the professorial series and in the experiment station series. And at least on paper, the vice president for agricultural sciences had the authority to withhold or to allocate authority to fill those FTE [full-time equivalent] positions in the experiment station. Approximately an average 70 percent of the FTE-ness was funded in the experiment station, with an average of about 30 percent funded from the instructional budget, which came under the authority of the chancellors. It was obvious that the chancellor and the vice president had to work out some accommodation to work together, in order to be able to administer the program and the personnel involved. Lage: It seems as if it would get even more complicated when you think of the faculty responsibility for promotion and tenure on the Academic Senate Budget Committee. 149 Kendrick: Well, that point was clear even before I got the appointment, in that the vice president and the director only dealt with resource allocation, not with personnel administration. So once the position was authorized for filling, and allocated to a department or to a college to pursue a particular program, authority was given to recruit a person for that position. And that is the last that we — the director and the vice president- had to do with that particular position, except for the resource support for it. All the recruitment activities and the oversight for ultimate evaluation of merit increases and promotion was a campus affair. I had nothing to do with that, and didn't want to. It was inappropriate for the vice president to be involved at that level of individual detail. So that was always understood. On the other hand, in the Agricultural Extension Service, the vice president functioned there like a chancellor, because the chief administrative officer for the people in extension ultimately was the vice president, through the director of extension. Lage : They didn't have a tie to a campus anywhere. Kendrick: That's correct. Even though the extension specialists were residents in departments of their specialty on campuses, they were recruited, evaluated for merit increases and promotions through the extension line, and ultimately responsible administratively to the director and the vice president. So, part of the personnel of the division was directly responsible to the vice president, and part of it was not. In later years of my administration, I did not concern myself with individual personnel decisions, only with the allocation of vacated positions to particular programs or locations. The director acted on all personnel action on behalf of the vice president. Reports of Academic and Advisory Group Committees on the Division's Direction Kendrick: These things were not clearly apparent when I first arrived. I had to find those things out for myself. I was also unaware of the fact that there already was in existence a faculty and extension committee working on an academic plan. And they were about finished with their work — they were aiming towards July of '68 as a completion date, and you'll remember I came on board in April. They'd been at work nearly nine months already. That committee had been appointed by Harry Wellman. 150 Kendrick: Now. I assumed that the reason it kind of lost its place in the sun was because all the other changes that were going on in the University, such as changing presidents, and Harry being the acting president for the year while the Regents were searching for the successor to Clark Kerr, and a general feeling of treading water and waiting for positions to be filled. It seemed that the vacancy in the University dean of agriculture position was something that was really not going to be pursued with any vigor until there was a president on board. But that committee worked hard and well, and they produced a report that was worthy of their efforts. I took it seriously, and as a matter of fact, I welcomed the fact that it was in existence because when President Hitch said that we needed an academic plan, and when I discovered that this committee was in existence, I said, "Hooray 1 We're already almost able to do that." They, in due course, presented me with a plan. I met with them once or twice, to share some thoughts of my own with them. But they (the thoughts) weren't very profound because I was relatively inexperienced and didn't have the background of having spent nine months working on the plan. I was aware of another report that had been produced by Robert Long, who at that time was a senior vice president for Bank of America and a member of the Agricultural Advisory Committee for the division. It was a report produced by that advisory committee and addressed things that the division needed to pay attention to. Lage : So this was advice coming from outside the University? Kendrick: Yes. I was getting some outside advice as well as internal. It became known as the Long Report. It also contained some valuable information about the directions of things. Well, all these were available to me by summer of '68. I had discovered also, not too long after I had arrived, that the legislature had requested a report of what the division was doing, a kind of justification of its existence. And that was the first of many such requests which came through from the legislature. I had to put together something I didn't know much about [laughter], and that was a description of what we were all about, and what marvelous things we were doing while paying attention to things the legislators were interested in. That was delivered in a rush. The deadline was coming down on us in a hurry, related to the budget hearings in Sacramento. So those were really the first work assignments that I found myself engaged in. 151 Kendrick: All of the staffing of the division office was in place. The director of the experiment station was Clarence Kelly; the director of Agricultural Extension was George Alcorn; and all the support staff remained in place. I didn't bring anyone with me. Douglas McNeill was the special assistant to the vice president. Lage : You mentioned your administrative assistant — Kendrick: Yes. She was Nona Brown. Nona Brown had served four previous administrators in the division, and I was the fifth, and her Waterloo. [laughter] Lage: Are you going to elaborate on that? Kendrick: No. We had a good relationship. I think she just wanted to retire. It was not a problem with her; she was very helpful in getting me oriented into a lot of things that needed my attention, and I needed to know about. And she was quite loyal. There was no real problem. It's just, after so long a time you get tired where you are, and she was ready to retire. Lage: I want to hear more about the advisory committee report. When I read through and looked through the California Farmer for this period, that is '68-'69, it seemed like things were on fire in the farm community, that there was a lot of feeling about the agriculture labor situation, and the farmers felt very much on the defensive. Now, did this affect that advisory report, or did it affect your job in another way? Kendrick: It certainly did affect the position. It didn't affect the academic plan as much, as I recall — the report which the staff and faculty committee put together, and that I had high hopes for. I read it, and I was somewhat disappointed in it, I guess, because it didn't seem to address what I felt were the current and future problems; it just alluded to them. It failed to deal adequately with labor and management, environmental quality, environmental degradation, and the kind of problems that agriculture associated with people relationships. It projected pretty much standard agricultural needs as were known in the past, and how we needed to do more of what we were doing, do it better and more efficiently. Lage: Did the report from the faculty go in that same direction? Kendrick: That's what I'm talking about. Lage: Okay — I was thinking about that agricultural advisory — Kendrick: The Long Committee? Lage: Yes. 152 Kendrick: The Long Committee was more specific. In fact, it identified some real problems that needed attention, but most of them were economic and marketing problems. Those are persistent problems; they're with us today, and they were with us then. It was less concerned about needing more pounds, or tons, of agriculture products than it was on knowing how to handle what was already produced. The report stated that the University's Division of Agricultural Sciences didn't seem to be giving the kind of help expected, or that growers had received in the past, on how to deal with marketing problems. So one of the first challenges I met was to pay more attention to these economic and marketing problems. Also expressed as a concern was the fact that the University's Agricultural Experiment Station seemed to be withdrawing from field-oriented problems. There did not seem to be as many experiment station individuals out in field plots, or as often as growers remembered seeing the individuals' predecessors and other people. They wondered whether or not the University really had a commitment to agriculture's needs. So that was another kind of attitudinal climate I inherited with this assignment. Lage : Let's go back to that faculty report that you were talking about. Kendrick: Okay. I perceived that the faculty report had taken a lot of effort to produce, so, as was standard procedure, I bundled it up and sent it off to the campuses, to the deans, and said, "Please take this document and have it reviewed by your faculty, in order to get some comments, agreements or disagreements." I also said that I'd like those comments back so that we could discuss what we're going to do next. I gave them what I thought was an adequate amount of time, but I don't recall how much. But it was enough to have faculty input. I was disappointed to receive nothing in return. Now, I've got to digress to indicate that two of the campuses were undergoing changes in their deanships. On July 1 of '68, at Riverside, Mack Bugger was appointed dean of agriculture and Boysie Day was appointed associate director of the experiment station. We discussed earlier the administrative problem this change presented, and I think it had something to do with the lack of enthusiasm for a report that Kendrick sent down and asked for comments. At Davis, Chancellor [Emil] Mrak was retiring, and they were looking for a successor for him. The dean of agriculture at Davis, Jim Meyer, was named Mrak's successsor as chancellor, I think in the fall of '68. And Chet McCorkle, who had been the executive vice chancellor for the Davis campus, was named by Jim Meyer as the dean of agriculture to succeed him. So that was a 153 Kendrick: change in the administration at Davis. The only holdover dean and associate director was Gort Linsley at Berkeley, not the largest segment of the division. So the faculty had other things to think about, other tnan a so-called division master academic plan. And that explained somewhat the lack of response. This led me to the conclusion that if my deans' council, which was the administrative council I continued to meet with monthly, was persuaded that the plan didn't excite them very much, or didn't continue to challenge them to spend much time with it, that it wasn't going to go anywhere. This was another case where it was something I had no part in initiating, so I didn't feel any particular ownership of what was produced, and since it contained what I thought were some deficiencies, it wound up being a nice exercise without much impact. Lage: Went on the shelf. Kendrick: And as I think I said earlier, most academic plans have about as much impact as dropping a pebble in a pond of water: they cause a little ripple, and then everything settles back to the way it was. Pressure from Farming Community, Legislature, Regents; The Division in a Defensive Position ## Lage: Now, let's talk a little bit about how you developed your agenda, since you didn't rely on the academic plan. Kendrick: Okay. I'm not quite sure just how I developed what might be called my agenda. It probably developed in response to concerns which I had resulting from comments that I received from certain members of the Board of Regents, and certain members of the legislature, in the course of their examining the agriculture budget. You mentioned reading California Farmer during the period of the sixties and noting that there was a lot of unrest in the farming community. There was great concern about Cesar Chavez and his labor organizing operations. The use of pesticides was also a major concern. Rachel Carson had published her book Silent Spring in 1962, and the traditional agricultural community resented that book. They thought it was an intrusion into their business by someone who ought to know better and didn't. They disputed many of her facts, really on very shaky grounds because they didn't have the data to do so. Lage: Did the University have data? 154 Kendrick: No, it didn't exist. There were some experiments started when I was in Riverside, by some of my colleagues in entomology who were beginning to wonder what would happen downstream several years from all the insecticides they were putting on the ground. The experiments were being set up to answer some of these questions, but there was no hard data to suggest that DDT remained in the food chain and didn't break down very easily. Data was also beginning to accumulate in studies at Riverside and a few other places, showing that resistance to DDT was showing up in insect populations. So even before it was banned from use as a bad, persistent insecticide, its broad use was being phased out because it took more quantity to kill fewer bugs, and people who were really thinking about that problem realized that they were dealing with an obsolete chemical. They moved on to the organic phosphates and found out that the insects had a marvelous capacity to breed resistance to that group of compounds, too. So it became kind of a treadmill effect, which was another problem to deal with. Wide use of insecticides in agriculture was traditionally accepted as the way to produce undamaged crops, and we had to begin thinking of different ways to replace the traditional control measure for insects and other pests. Well, with labor and the quality of the environment which encompassed the fungicide-pesticide problem, another concern was the consumer. The consumer has never really been very well organized, even though there are consumer organizations, because everybody is a consumer, in a sense, and that is a hindrance in being able to identify what some of the consumer problems were. Some of those problems related to marketing — which the Long Committee had identified as being important. All of these were talked about at Regents' meetings by Fred [Frederick G.] Dutton, Bill [William M.] Roth, Norton Simon, and several others. I would have to review the make-up of the Board of Regents at that time to identify all of the concerned individuals, but Fred Dutton's constant comments stick in my memory. Lage: He was trying to urge the division to address some of these problems? Kendrick: Well, what he was saying was that the division was nothing more than a publicly supported research and extension activity for agribusiness and it cared little for the environment or for farm labor. He accentuated the notion that the division was an agribusiness adjunct. That same attitude was dominant in our legislative hearings, when the budget came into purview, because Assemblyman [John] Vasconcellos was, even back in 1968, a very 155 Kendrick: vocal critic of the agricultural program in the University. He made the same kind of allegations that the division cared little for anything other than large, organized agribusiness. I may have told you earlier that the term "agribusiness" was created by a colleague of mine — at least he claimed to be the author of it. Guy MacLeod, at the time I arrived in Berkeley, was a special assistant in the vice president's office handling a program to educate applicators on how to apply pesticides in a judicious and safe manner. Guy MacLeod was a Ph.D. research entomologist for a while on the faculty at Berkeley. He went to Cornell for a while and ultimately wound up back in Fresno as the owner- ope rat or of a business called Sunland Chemicals. That business was later sold to one of the large chemical concerns. Guy was always interested in education and the academic world and he was a very powerful and influential person in the San Joaquin Valley. He organized a group of people who supported the establishment of two agricultural field stations — the Kearney Field Station and the Westside Field Station. So he was a good benefactor as far as the division was concerned, but a strong chemical pesticide advocate. Lage: When he coined the term, did he mean it as a critical term? Kendrick: No, he coined it in good faith. I'm not even sure he did it, but he claimed that he did. I didn't spend any time trying to trace the origin of that word, so if his claim is valid, that's fine with me. He coined the word to describe and convey the notion that agriculture was a business; it wasn't just a hobby. You had to approach farming, the production of the commodity, in a businesslike way. That notion was absolutely correct. You could not survive in the climate of competition, marketing, advertising, borrowing to finance the operation, if you don't understand how businesses operate. So, in all good faith, he was trying to describe the fact that the processors, the transportation industry, the retail markets and the production aspects of agriculture were really parts of an agribusiness system. But that word was quickly captured by proponents of the labor- management conflict to indicate one party of the natural conflict between employer and employee in agriculture. It was alleged by the non-agribusiness proponents that the publicly supported programs were skewed towards benefitting agribusiness and that they were not paying attention to what the rest of the population really was concerned about, such as agriculture's use of an excessive amount of water, the contamination of the environment with pesticides, and the disregard for quality of their products. 156 Kendrick: That climate was perpetuated by this representation on the Board of Regents and in the Ways and Means Committee of the assembly, all of which wasn't wasted on me. Lage : Yes. I can see that. Agriculture was in a defensive position, and it looks like your division was as well. Kendrick: Well, it was swept up in it because, if our program was accused of paying attention only to one aspect of the total enterprise, I had to do something about it because I was sensitive to the fact that we were a publicly supported institution which needed to support a program that really responded to the total needs of the state's population. Lage: So what the critics said does seem to have a certain amount of truth in it, then? Kendrick: Oh yes, absolutely, it was correct. It's just the fact that when you are accused of something, you are resentful. I had a large operating experiment station and Cooperative Extension Service people and they didn't like to be told that they were favoring one segment of society over another. They said, "We're available to advise anybody that wants to seek it. We're not directing our activities specifically to agribusiness." The problem with that answer is that the people and the groups who were complaining about being on the outside were not accustomed to coming and knocking on the county agricultural farm advisors' doors and asking for help. And the sophisticated, organized, business-like agriculture industries knew where to go to get what they wanted. Lage: And they had committees set up — Kendrick: Had parallel committees, and they employed professionals who knew how to tap into the system, and they used the system. I've never quite accepted the notion that organized labor was so deficient that they couldn't have used the system also if they had been a little more aggressive, but they didn't. They figured that we were so committed to the agricultural industries as they knew them that they would be less than welcome if they requested our assistance, and therefore they didn't even bother to do so. I'm not sure that they may not have had some unhappy experiences that sort of cemented that point of view because we had some people who didn't sympathize with organized labor. It was a very tense time — they felt if they had anything to say that helped labor, then they would alienate all these owners and agricultural enterprises and farmers whom they'd been working with all the time, and therefore they'd have the other side condemning them. So it was a case of damned if you do and damned if you don't, and not knowing how to handle it. 157 Broadening Representation on the Agricultural Advisory Council Lage : So how did you try to move the institution — ? Kendrick: It was fun. The first thing I did in trying to make that change was to reorganize the Agricultural Advisory Council. That's the group of advisors external to the University. When I inherited it, the committee was composed of chairs and leaders of organized agricultural groups, such as the tomato growers, the canners, the citrus growers, the avocado growers, the Agricultural Council of California, and the Council of California Growers. We had and still do have a lot of organized commodity marketing groups — raisin growers, walnut growers, almond growers, cotton growers — you name it, we've got it. But that committee as an advisory group, as you can probably guess, was concerned mainly about the commodities for which each member was responsible, and the problems associated with those commodities were mostly production problems, as well as marketing problems. I felt that the committee representation needed to be broadened, so as the members' terms expired I appointed .people from some of the non-agricultural constituencies. I sought representation, if not from organized labor, at least from people who understood labor problems. I appointed a consumer spokesman who was particularly effective and was the food editor for the Los Angeles Times. She was not exactly an organizer of consumer groups, but at least was effective in dealing with the consumers' interests. I added a person who was a well-known newspaper writer on environmental matters. He is still writing the same kind of columns today — Harold Gilliam, who writes a column that appears in "This World" in the San Francisco Chronicle on Sundays. He called me just the other day with a question about California's agriculture. Harold was a marvelous addition to the advisory council because he'd ask those embarrassing questions in the most polite way. [laughter] The person I asked to bring some sensitivity about labor to the council was Andy Juvenal. I've lost track of him, but he was a minister in San Francisco, but not a minister from one of the main-line churches. He was from the Mission District or somewhere like that. Lage: Did he have a connection with agriculture labor — ? Kendrick: He had — yes — and I can't recall just exactly what it was. was well informed about agricultural labor. But he 158 Lage: Did you think of going right to the source and getting somebody from the farmworkers' union? Kendrick: Yes. I did. I inquired of the farmworkers' union whom they would recommend, but they didn't want to participate. They never wanted to be included in this organization because they thought they would be co-opted, misused. I think they wanted to be able to criticise without being made a part of the organization and subject to being neutralized or at least making it more difficult for them to be publicly critical. I can understand that; it's a point of view that I can deal with. But I think that they would have been a little better served by being willing to sit down and negotiate some programs or opportunities for their own benefit. 159 IX PUBLIC SCRUTINY AND LEGAL CHALLENGES TO AGRICULTURAL PROGRAMS Agricultural Mechanization and Farm Labor Opportunities; Vasconcellos Committee Hearings. 1973 Kendrick Lage: Kendrick: Now, on top of all this social environment, the beginning of the long, arduous arguments about mechanization and what it does to farm labor opportunities took place. Agriculture was not economically all that healthy; it was moving as rapidly as it could to reduce labor costs. It wished not only to reduce labor costs, but also its dependency on what was perceived to be a relatively unstable supply of labor at the time when it was needed for harvests. Farmers don't have a lot of time to find people to fill positions and negotiate with them when the fruit is ripe on the trees or the vines. So to the extent that they could overcome the labor unrest that Cesar liked to used as a means of organizing, and to reduce the uncertainty and the hazards of harvesting, planting, and pruning, the farmers were more than ready to move to mechanical aids in their farming practices. And the U.S. universities with agricultural programs, not just the University of California, and the USDA [U.S. Department of Agriculture] had comprehensive programs to develop mechanical aids to the agriculture processes. How long had those programs been in effect? quite a ways? Does this go back It goes back — yes. You go back to the cotton harvester. I don't know just exactly when that was, but it was developed before World War IL I can recall as a youngster in high school, colleagues of my father working on a mechanical sugar beet harvester, so that they could raise the sugar beets up onto the surface of the ground and pick them up in a big rotating sphere of spikes. This machine was designed to replace workers who would pull the beets out of the ground, top them, and toss them into a truck. So the development of mechanical aids to harvesting was not confined to the tomato harvester alone. It had progenitors in other produce as well. 160 Kendrick: But the tomato harvester had an interesting life of its own. It has become the symbol of science-developed mechanical aids resulting in field labor positions being reduced. That fact was receiving attention in the legislature also; it was perceived that the University was paying attention only to farm management's problems, the farmer's problems, and not the farm laborer's problems. Lage : Was it the Agricultural Experiment Station or the Cooperative Extension Service that would work on developing these machines? Kendrick: The experiment station. Extension was involved, but only to the extent of evaluating in the field these developing devices. They were developed oy the Department of Agricultural Engineering in the experiment station. I wanted to relate an incident that sort of characterized my life before the legislature. It was a particularly long and dreary afternoon of hearings in the early 1970s, in which a special session was called by the Assembly Ways and Means Subcommittee on the University's budget, to listen to the complaintants about agricultural programs. The session was chaired by John Vasconcellos, an assemblyman. There was an array of witnesses, a pretty good-sized room full of people, to listen to all the allegations about how the University's agricultural research program was skewed to the right. It was alleged that the research was not helpful at all because it resulted in the displacement of farm labor and increased unemployment. It was stated by the critics that, on the one hand, public funds were being used to develop mechanical aids for harvests resulting in increased unemployment which, on the other hand, placed increased demands on publicly funded welfare programs. You can see that that allegation provided much food for discussion. It's the sane argument which is used in pointing out the irony of the U.S. government supporting programs in tobacco research and, at the same time, supporting cancer research and pointing out the connection between smoking and lung cancer and heart disease. It's not quite as dramatic as the cancer-tobacco situation, but a lot of discussion was taking place on how the public representatives could allow such a situation to exist where this dual activity was counterproductive. Well, we had to listen to a lot of allegations that were not exactly true; they were exaggerations about the insensitivity of the people who were engaged in those kinds of programs. There were allegations also, which were untrue, that in fact we had no programs addressing labor displacement. Actually, we did have programs that were attempting to deal with some of the problems that labor was facing. But they were kind of buried in the rhetoric of the day. 161 Kendrick: We also had by that time a nutrition education program in Cooperative Extension addressing nutrition problems of the poor and trying to teach them how to economize in their food purchases but at the same time improve the nutritional balance of the meals which they prepared. But this program was not acknowledged by the Vasconcellos Committee as useful. Near the end of the hearing, after listening to all those allegations, my turn came to respond. The rhetoric was full of acrimony, and feelings were really tense. I asked Assemblyman Vasconcellos if I could begin my testimony with a representative who was a small farmer, a Mrs. Sally Oliver. He said, "Certainly, you can." Sally had been livid all afternoon. She was almost beside herself with emotion because she was concerned about what she perceived to be much misrepresentation of her situation. When she came to the table to testify, she could hardly control her voice; she was really emotional. She said she had listened to all these allegations against the University's program by people who didn't have any idea what farming was all about. There wasn't a farmer among all who had testified. They were either academics or they were — I forget the terms she used; they weren't very complimentary. She said she was there as a farmer's wife, and furthermore, she was there as a small farmer's wife. They had about sixty acres of almonds and walnuts, and she said to the members of the subcommittee, "Have you ever tried to knock almonds out of a tree with a pole? If you haven't, then you ought to try it. And if you've got thirty-five or forty acres of almond trees that you have to harvest the nuts from with a pole, it is one tough business." II She went on to say that the only reason they were able to sustain themselves in farming at all was because of the help they'd gotten from the University of California, and in particular in their mechanical harvesting aid program. That program had developed a means of harvesting almond nuts from trees with a mechanical shaker so that they didn't have to knock the nuts from the trees, as they once did, by hand-held poles. Well, her emotional support and the fact that she was a farmer's wife who obviously did more than just cook in the kitchen — she was out working in the field — changed the atmosphere in that hearing almost immediately. We weren't able to change their minds at all, but we certainly changed their politeness and their receptivity as far as the subsequent testimony was concerned, where we tried to set the record straight. But I always identify that hearing as symbolic of the environment we typically had to deal with in terms of having the University's agricultural program accepted and understood generally. 162 Lage: It's also interesting, I think, for the purpose of this history to see what the forces were that led to change in the program. Was this testimony all taking place during the University's budget review in the legislature? Kendrick: Yes. The annual review. Lage: So you'd be called upon to defend your program. Kendrick: Any time the agricultural budget was up for legislative review, I was the spokesperson for it. And that's the time I had to deal with criticism and the critics. If we happened to have budget proposals for new programs, I and a few expert witnesses would be there to defend them. During this antagonistic climate of allegations and criticism of the University's agricultural program for lack of attention to the plight of the farm worker, and for not doing enough for the small and economically stressed farmers, or for underfunding migrant children's education, I gave the legislature ample opportunity to augment the budget for these programs, by putting in requests in the University's budget. These requests were denied; in fact, on several occasions our budget was reduced, and it was suggested that I ought to reallocate what I already had to these programs if I felt they needed augmented support. The only way I could really reallocate within the University's budget was to discharge people, and that doesn't happen without just cause. Their suggestion just wasn't very practical. Budget and Personnel Problems in Nutrition Education Kendrick: The other two programs that caused problems for the division were associated with 4-H and nutrition in Cooperative Extension. These two programs were expanding their traditional rural homemaker clientele and the rural youth leadership and commodity training programs into the inner city, into the poorer segments of our society. Lage: Now, how did that change occur? Kendrick: Well, the nutrition education program developed because of a federal appropriation through the USDA to Cooperative Extension to establish a nationwide network of expanded nutrition education programs. It resulted in an allocation to the University of California's Cooperative Extension of three to four million dollars a year. It didn't start at that level; it started at less than that level, but it grew to be about that much over a fifteen-year period. 163 Kendrick: But the fundamental problem with that program was that it was not indexed for any increase in costs. It took time to get it started so initially there was a surplus of funds, but once we got it geared up and running, there was no augmentation to take care of salary increases and expanded program needs. The federal appropriation was fixed by a formula which didn't include a cost of living adjustment. That meant in order to accommodate the needs for growth in salaries, we had to plan program reductions over time. The only way to do that was to eliminate some temporary positions in the nutritional education program. The program was administered by regular Cooperative Extension personnel in the family and consumer science program, so their funding and their support was not dependent on this special appropriation. Most of the funds were expended in employing people half time as "nutrition aides." There were a few nutrition aide supervisors also supported by these funds. The nutrition aides were recruited from the economically stressed communities where they were expected to go back and conduct the education program. Their clientele were the people who often were very poorly educated and very poverty stricken, and in many instances single-parent units. Those nutrition aide recruits were given special training in the four basic food groups and became a very valuable part of the extension employment staff. But when adjustments in our personnel employment were needed, they were the ones who we had to adjust out of the program. They didn't understand why this was taking place for them, when they could see their supervisors being retained. Lage: Now, why were they the ones that had to go? Kendrick: Because they were on the special funds that were not being augmented. And those were the funds that I was trying to get the State of California to augment so we could take care of the situation, but the legislature was totally unresponsive, as was Mr. Vasconcellos — and that's where the augmentation had to start. His committee was totally unresponsive. Their consistent answer was, "Well, that's a federal program, and any augmentation should come from the federal government." That was certainly an insensitive answer as far as I was concerned. I could see what was coming: the federal money was going to dry up in due course; it was just not going to grow rapidly enough to meet the needs, and we were going to be faced continually with having to shrink the size of the programs to match the dollars available, and we had to provide some kind of backstop contingency fund, to meet anticipated obligations. 164 Lage: Would it have been possible to reallocate, as the legislature told you to? What was the difficulty with that? Kendrick: Not unless I discharged staff. Lage: You'd be discharging people in other programs. Kendrick: Yes. Lage: And hiring them in this program. Kendrick: Yes. It didn't make sense to me. As long as those other programs were meeting some needs too. Reallocation is a popular suggestion of budget analysts, but in people-concentrated programs it is difficult to achieve without significant layoffs. In the Agricultural Experiment Station, about eighty percent of the faculty have tenure. You can't discharge those people, except for cause. You can separate them if there is a critical budget stringency, but not just to reallocate funds. Lage: So your hands were not completely free. Kendrick: No, I was not free to take what was perceived to be a fairly large and significant allocation to the Division of Agriculture for programs and reallocate that every year to programs which seemed to be surfacing. Although that's really a fundamental problem for the University as a whole, it presented me with a problem for almost all of the eighteen and a half years I was responsible for the agricultural program. The only way I could really establish a new program was to get new money because I couldn't free up enough existing committed funds to really make a difference. That's because the money was primarily tied up in the salaries of people. Lage: Now, the people you put in charge, or who were put in charge of the nutrition education, came from a more traditional program. Is that the case? Kendrick: That's true. Lage: Had they been involved with nutrition education? Kendrick: Some of them. Lage: But in a more middle-class setting, or — ? Kendrick: In a different client audience. During the war. World War II, there was a big effort made by extension to help in the Victory Garden movement by helping people identify things they could grow and teaching them how to grow the vegetable crops. They also were involved in teaching people how to preserve their produce by 165 Kendrick: canning or freezing methods. So extension had the talent for that kind of education program. But they weren't dealing with migrants; they weren't dealing with farm labor people — Lage: This must have created problems in personnel, because the traditional extension people were supervising aides who came out of these communities that the supervisors had very little connection with previously. Kendrick: That's true. The main problem came when we had to cut back the work force and we didn't cut back traditionally longtime employees of extension. The ones whom we had to separate were the last employed, the least educated, who were most in need of employment. I must say the program wasn't a total loss because we trained a lot of people along the way who moved on into other employment positions and didn't stay with us. They found full- time positions elsewhere. So that part of the program was completely successful because we helped a number of people gain employment elsewhere. But I'm kind of critical of the program because to some extent it duplicated the programs of some other agencies of government where working with the poor was primarily their main assignment, and it was not necessarily extension's main assignment; it's only one of many programs. I think our program has become more of an employment opportunity program than a nutritional education program, and that's not what extension is all about. It's not primarily a stepping-stone to other employment opportunities. Lage: It seems in conception like a really good program; extension has the mechanism in place for reaching out into the community. Kendrick: True. But there is also the county health department, and the county welfare department, and food stamps are available. Why do you need another agency to address the same target audience? That's really the main problem, I think, with extension's nutritional education program. I have to say, however, that I think California has one of the best nutritional education programs in the country, and I don't think it was a loss at all, but it certainly caused a lot of personnel problems. Lage: I think you were going to lead into some of that, I misdirected you — Kendrick: Well, that's a little ahead of the story, and I'll get into that when we spend more time on extension. This social climate did not prevail early in the program, but gradually developed after the first two or three years of its successful implementation. 166 Lage: So this nutrition education program and the mechanization were issues early on? Kendrick: Yes, relatively early in my tenure. The nutrition education program was initiated about 1970 or '71. The mechanization issue was an issue almost from the start of my tenure as vice president. The University's Development of the Tomato Harvester Kendrick: Let me say a little bit about the tomato harvester because it was such a unique case, and it occupied a lot of my time. Tomatoes in California, the large fields of tomatoes, are grown for processing — ketchup and paste and soups. Up until about 1964, they were harvested by hand by a labor force that was largely transient from Mexico. They were imported legally for the period of time needed to harvest the produce, and called braceros. About 1964, my predecessor, Dan Aldrich, participated on a panel to study farm labor. As a result of the panel's study, they recommended phasing out the bracero program, which ultimately was done. The bracero program was terminated about 1965. So Aldrich's activity occurred before 1965. Going back even further. Jack Hanna, an experiment station employee in the Department of Vegetable Crops at Davis, responded to a farmer's question one day about "What would ever happen to us if we didn't have the bracero program?" His response was, "Well, we've got to find a way to harvest these things mechanically. " So ten or twelve years before 1964, Jack Hanna was busy breeding a variety of tomato with a compact vine with the fruit that ripened all at once. This was the key to the concept of a mechanical harvester because to harvest the field it is necessary to destroy the vine by pulling it from the ground, lifting it onto a shaker that shakes the dirt and fruit off the vine and carries the fruit onto another conveyer belt where workers riding the harvester finish the hand culling. Jack Hanna got Coby Lorenzen of the Department of Agricultural Engineering of Davis interested in designing this mechanical harvester. So by 1964, the two of them had pretty well completed the necessary breeding and mechanical design necessary for harvesting these tomatoes mechanically. They had interested a manufacturing firm in Rio Vista, the Blackwelder Manufacturing Finn in putting the machine together as a 167 Kendrick: commercial venture, so that they would have something that the farmer could use that wasn't just an experimental machine from the University. So when the bracero program ended — Lage: Was there any connection between the ending of the program and the fact that this harvester was in place, do you think? Kendrick: No, that was serendipity. The thoughtful ness of the program was that Coby Lorenzen and Jack Hanna had foresight enough back a dozen years or so to begin thinking about what they would do in case something happened to the labor supply. That was a dramatic anticipation of something which eventually did happen. There was a lot of money invested in the processing of tomato plants. The processing of tomatoes was the backbone of the canning industry in California. It supported the peach canning, pear canning, and all the rest of the fruit canning operation. Tomato canning really was the money-maker. That industry was very nervous about the ending of the bracero program because of what it might do to tomato production, and to this processing industry. They were prepared to move it to Mexico where the labor supply would be available if they had to. Well, because of these early machines and their availability, between 1964 and 1968 fields harvested mechanically went from ten or fifteen percent to nearly ninety percent in a short four-year period. No other agricultural development really has developed quite that rapidly. It was a very dramatic change in the way of handling tomatoes: the tomato variety changed and the mechanical harvesters were everywhere — Lage: Did it affect the size of the operation? Did you have to have a larger operation to make use of the harvesting machine? Kendrick: Acreage was increased. You don't use a tomato harvester en two acres of tomatoes. It's a fairly expensive investment. A part of the criticism of the University program is that by developing the harvester we forced small farmers out of business, and only the large farmers could survive. Well, the records show that a lot of those who grew tomatoes previously were not growing these processing tomatoes following the introduction of the harvester. That didn't mean they went out of business; they just changed their crop and grew something different, not tomatoes. Or they sold their small acreages to larger growers where it was economical to use a harvester. Also, the critics overlooked the fact that the industry was going to move out of California, period. The processors were prepared to move. There wouldn't have been any place for the 168 Kendrick: small tomato grower to peddle his crop anyway. But that's all part of the rhetoric that you have to deal with in any kind of testimonial situation when you're dealing with this problem. In 1972, a person who is presently the commissioner of agriculture for Texas named Jim Hightower published a book filled — and I'll show my prejudice — with half-truths, called Hard Tomatoes, Hard Times. Lage : Now, you have to admit that the tomatoes are hard. [laughter] I'll show my prejudice. Kendrick: Yes, I'll show you mine, too. The problem with that book and the allegation is that he was condemning the harvester, and the thick-skinned tomato that was developed for the mechanical harvester, not only thick-skinned, but it was thick- fie shed. The locules inside were full of flesh, and not the usual kind of tomato with a lot of gelatinous material and openness — those in the trade call it "high in solids." Less water, and more solids. Lage: Is that because it was less easily bruised? Kendrick: Yes, well they wanted more solids for carrying it in the harvest equipment and the conveyors afterward. You know, you see these tomatoes going down the highway in these great big bins? You can imagine what the tomato on the bottom would look like if it didn't have some sort of solid structure to preserve itself and not become a bunch of paste in the bucket. The allegation throughout the book was that the agricultural scientists had lost sight of the fact that they were dealing with quality products, and they were responding to the needs of agribusiness again, the canning industry, by developing this tasteless, hard tomato — they were about like a golf ball — at the expense of really being concerned with what the consumer wanted. The fallacy of that argument was that the tomato industry in California utilizing the harvester was the processing tomato. In all the years when I was the vice president, no one wrote to me and complained about the taste of ketchup or paste. That's where those tomatoes go. They were not fresh-market tomatoes. Lage: And also the canned? Kendrick: Well, even those are a different variety. The reason that we have such a lousy tomato in the fresh market is not because they were bred for mechanical harvesting; it's because they're grown away from the source of the retail market. Even when I was working as a plant pathologist trying to control some tomato blight diseases in southern California in San Diego County, the standard practice of harvesting those tomatoes was to pick them when they were what was called "pinks," the shoulder of the 169 Kendrick: tomato was just beginning to turn from green to orange. If you picked them any later than that, they would destroy themselves before they ever got to market. They subsequently found that they could make those rocks look like tomatoes by submitting them to ethylene gas. a natural product, and they would ripen up and look red as they could be, but if you pick a tomato green, it's never going to get any better than the day you picked it. It's not like a honeydew melon which gets a little sweeter and softer after you take it home and let it sit around a while. But not a tomato. There's plenty of room to condemn the way you handle fresh market tomatoes, and I will join the crowd that would criticise their taste, but it's because you have to buy a vine-ripened tomato pretty close to its source in order to get a good tomato. If the Bay Area are buying tomatoes that are produced in Mexico or San Diego [laughs], it's not going to be a good quality product. Lage : So that's a separate problem — Kendrick: That's a separate issue altogether. But Hard Tomatoes, Hard Times did not make that distinction. It was used as another bit of evidence that agribusiness again had captured the activities and the research programs of these publicly supported programs. The book was published in 1972 by the Washington D.C.-based foundation, the Agribusiness Accountability Project. fi Lage: Did they use California in particular as a case in point? Kendrick: They sure did. Lage: — because you're the ones that developed it. Kendrick: Yes. Florida came in for a certain amount of criticism, but the harvester was the focal point of the criticism. Lage: Now, this man is now commissioner of agriculture? Kendrick: Yes, in Texas. He's a Texan. Texas elects its agricultural commissioner. He's a politician and aspires to be governor or some other elective officer. In talks I've given, I've tried to identify what I thought were major landmarks that pushed for change in the agricultural awareness, at least in the research programs. Each of these was kind of resentfully received and caused us a lot of anguish. We felt abused by being falsely accused of conspiracies and so forth, but they did have an impact, and they were not all wrong. 170 Kendrick: The things I've cited — the first turning event was Rachel Carson, who really drew attention in a dramatic way to the fact that we were destroying the environment by not paying attention to what any of these pesticides that we were using to kill the bugs was doing to the bird populations. This was a first in calling attention to the adverse effects of DDT and other insecticides. She published her book Silent Spring in 1962. At that time, we were, as a land-grant institution, emphasizing production agriculture at the expense of the consumer's desires, labor needs, and all that. So the two books. Hard Tomatoes, Hard Times and Silent Spring, published a decade apart, called attention to three concerns: farm labor displacement, quality of produce, and effects of pesticides on the environment. Each has had an impact on changing the emphasis of agricultural research. Now there is another one that we're having to deal with, and that's Jeremy Rifkin's concern about what biotechnology is apt to do about upsetting the naturalness of things. He sues and countersues the testing of the ice-minus microbe in the field and claims that we don't know what we're doing sufficiently well by introducing these genetically altered strains of microbes into the environment. He suggests that they could take over and produce adverse consequences that we are not able to handle. Rifkin has not written a book on the subject, but he and his small enterprise have caused the biotechnology movement considerable extra work and resentment. This is the fourth impact on changing the way agricultural research is being conducted today. If we can swallow our pride and that initial reaction to say, "What the hell does he know about it," and realize that the general public really doesn't understand what these scientists are up to, we can make these changes and be better off for doing so. But the public knows that some adverse developments have come from science and if it can't be reassured that nothing but good can come out of scientific discoveries, it is not sure that the risk is worth taking. Science has a continual job to inform the public fully about what it is doing to benefit society. Regents' Meeting on Mechanization and Labor Displacement, 1978 Kendrick: These are all forces that get your attention and you respond. You ignore them at your own peril. So here I inherited the Rachel Carson concern for environment, and I was right in the middle of the Hard Tomatoes, Hard Times mechanical harvest controversy that is still in existence. And that concern progressed through the legislature to the next big event in the mechanical argument, at a Regents' meeting. That resulted in the 171 Kendrick Lage: Kendrick: Lage: Kendrick: Lage: Kendrick: Lage: Kendrick: first public session of the Regents devoted to one topic, in which external testimony was invited. They were meeting in the Convention Center in Los Angeles on February 16, 1978.* There was so much pressure about the issue — by letters — that the lieutenant governor, Merv [Mervyn] Dymally, a Regent, requested a public hearing at a Regents' meeting. So it came through the political officers — Right. And how about the other regents? Button stand? Where did people like Fred Fred was not on the board at the time. His term expired, or he didn't attend that meeting. But this hearing in Los Angeles became quite an affair. They moved to a large room to accommodate the audience and to listen to about thirty witnesses with prepared talks. Tom Hayden was one of the witnesses; he was not an assemblyman at the time, but he was at the height of his advocacy of his California campaign for Economic Democracy, which proposed redistribution of wealth and land ownership. Cesar Chavez was the star of the show because he appeared in kind of a dramatic march down the center aisle to the table to give his statement about what had happened to the farmworkers because of the University's program. I also gave a statement, in much less dramatic fashion. Was it a tough act to follow? I didn't think so. I'm not being disrespectful; he had the charisma and the following, but — And sort of the emotional appeal. I didn't have to follow him. I was the first to give a statement. So they all had to follow my statement. But I had arranged for the Regents to hear a balanced presentation. It wasn't at all going to be like I had experienced in Sacramento where I felt like I was in a kangaroo court. It was really kind of an interesting afternoon. Long, and inconclusive, because there were sincere representations of a concern expressed by both * On deposit in University Archives, The Bancroft Library, are 1) the oral statements made and letters received by the Regents' Committee on Educational Policy in regard to Farm Mechanization Research for the February 16, 1978, hearing; 2) a summary of these materials prepared by the Division of Agricultural Sciences. 172 Kendrick: pro and con mechanical aids versus labor needs and the like. There were a few allegations that were rather unfounded and unfactual. I thought, but they were not really significant. They were emotional appeals about "I lost my job, and what are you going to do about it?" The proposed remedy really was not that the University researchers cease and desist their work in these areas, but that because they were causing labor displacement, it was felt that the field workers ought to be compensated in some fashion for their loss of jobs. And it was alleged that it was the University's obligation to provide that compensation for those lost job opportunities. It was my position that that was not the University's role; I recognized it as a problem that society had to do something about, but not the University. As a matter of fact, the University prior to my tenure had received a special allocation from the legislature of about $100,000 to pursue a research program in developing mechanical aids for harvesting and other agriculture programs. So we had on the books a special appropriation to foster the development of mechanical aids, and we had nothing on the books to support studies that would help deal with the problem of labor displacement and retraining programs, redirecting labor into other areas of — Lage: Did you ever apply for that kind of program, do you recall? Kendrick: Yes, we had some requests for that. But they got lost in the shuffle of budget building. I also was not enthusiastic in applying for that kind of program, because we did not really have enough competence within agriculture to pursue those kinds of problems. The only competence in this area existed in our departments of agricultural economics and with an extension economist. We have a Department of Applied Behavioral Sciences at Davis that gave some attention to the problem. I don't think it was as thoughtful as it could have been. It was largely a criticism of what had been done, and a concern that they were never allocated enough money to do what they wanted to do. And the problec was that they never were allocated enough money because the programs that they applied for support weren't very good as evaluated by their colleagues. We had a particular critic at the University of California at Santa Cruz in the sociology department, William Friedland, who had come from Cornell, who continues to be concerned about the sociology of agriculture. His criticism is not based too strongly on factual information, though it's better than some of the other stuff that has come through. 173 Kendrick: But there's been this constant current of criticism of the traditional agricultural research programs, and it hasn't just been Cesar Chavez and the organized labor people like him. but it's been colleagues in the sociology department. I've maintained all along that to hold the Division of Agriculture responsible for this is shortsighted. You need to hold the University of California responsible for addressing some of these issues, because there we have an Institute of Industrial Relations both on the Berkeley campus and the UCLA campus that specifically addresses labor- management problems. They've got talent and experience that can address those issues. There's nothing reassuring by asking only an agricultural engineer to understand what labor-management problems are. We do, as I said, have two or three experts in our agricultural economics department that I think have produced some very useful information about labor and handling the labor. And extension itself has developed programs with specially employed personnel who are trying to acquaint employers with how to handle appropri ately agricultural labor. And they've been very good programs. We haven't been ignorant of those needs. It's just been hard for people to recognize that they're not programs that you put millions of dollars into, so that if you compare the numbers of dollars going into the ag engineering department, compared with the numbers of dollars going into ag economics department, there's a vast difference. But you're buying hardware and machinery in the engineering departments, and you buy chalk and paper and calculators and computers in ag economics. So there is a difference in the required support, but we pay the people on the same general wage scale. Lage : Now, would it have been your job to ask for positions to be opened up, or to open up positions to people who had labor expertise or economic expertise? Kendrick: Yes. It was my job to provide a budget adequate enough to address the issues that were — Lage: But you would also tell them where you wanted people added? Kendrick: Yes. Lage: Or would each local unit — ? Kendrick: Well, let me finish the Regents' meeting, and then I'll get into that question. After this long afternoon, the Regents closed off that hearing with, "Thank you very much, we appreciate all of you being here today, and we feel better informed about the subject," and that dropped it. That was the end of it. 174 Lage: No direction? Kendrick: No direction to me to change my program one iota. It was not business as usual, but I had tried to respond to the fact that we were not ignoring the problem, that there was more than the issue of just a few jobs of picking tomatoes at stake — there were cannery workers, who were now employed, and who might not be employed without the harvester; there was the processing industry that was several hundred million dollars in value that had threatened to be displaced and moved to Mexico. So that we had retained an industry in California by this development that meant much more to the state economically than just a few field worker positions. It was wrong to take a snapshot view of the problem, in my opinion. Without trying to minimize the agony of the people who were losing their jobs, we tried to suggest to them that it was a state problem, a social problem to deal with, and not the University's sole problem. So much for that — but that was a much better episode than the legislative hearing. Legal Action Challenging the University's Agricultural Program. 1979 Kendrick: We still had criticism from the Agrarian Reform group in Davis. lhat group continued to saw away at the notion that our program ignored the needs of the working people and was primarily associated with making farmers rich. Ultimately, the California Rural Legal Assistance [CRLA] joined with this Agrarian Reform group at Davis and filed suit in 1979 against a number of named individuals, including Regents, the President, me, and others, on the basis that we were misusing public funds and violating the law: the federal Hatch Act and the federal Smith-Lever Act. The Hatch Act is the law that authorized the Agricultural Experiment Station expenditure and that includes some appropriations, and the Smith-Lever Act is the one that authorizes the existence of Cooperative Extension, and allocates for that. Lage: Lage: And when do these acts date from? Kendrick: The Hatch Act was passed by Congress in 1887, and the Smith-Lever Act in 1914. So they go back. They've been amended in the meantime to update them, so they're still in force and still current, and the fundamental description of why they were instituted is still valid. And what did they feel was in violation? 175 Kendrick: As far as the Hatch Act was concerned, the plaintiffs felt that there was a statement of the intent of the Hatch Act that the experiment station's activity should work towards full employment in the rural community. Now, there is a statement that says it is the goal of the Hatch Act to establish these experiment stations in such a way that they will promote the economic welfare of agriculture, and establish the rural community on a par with the urban community. In 1887, the rural community was really disadvantaged. All the wealth was concentrated in the urban areas, and cities were favored ground as far as society was concerned. So that the act addressed itself to neutralizing some of this difference and provide the rural community with attention and research that would match research needs for industry. And it had a statement that it intended to promote the economic welfare of agriculture, and all the other things including full employment. It is not clear whether it refers to full rural employment or just full employment in general — but the suit hung itself on this alleged insensitivity and lack of attention to full rural employment and farm labor in particular, therefore alleging a violation of the intent of that law. They also accused us of misusing the public trust. That's a state statute which says that it's against the law for any public entity to take public funds and grant them to private enterprise for private gain. Their assumption was that because we were active in developing mechanical aids which machinery manufacturers built and large farming interests used, that these were the only beneficiaries, and therefore we were taking public money for private gain, and that was the violation. But that wasn't the main example that they hung their hats on — mostly it was the fact that experiment station people and some extension people were evaluating chemical products from chemical companies as to the effectiveness of herbicides and pesticides. It was perceived that we were using those publicly supported positions to provide information to the chemical companies which they otherwise would have to buy for themselves at much greater cost than a few modest grants- in- aid. Without giving us the benefit of the fact that we were not doing it for the benefit of the chemical companies, we were trying to find something that would control the diseases and the pests of plants and animals. So that was the basis for that argument. Lage: So it didn't just focus on mechanization. Kendrick: No. They also initially accused a few of us of conflict of interest because we had some ties with some other business concerns. I did for a while serve as a member of the board of directors of the Tej on Agricultural Corporation and found it to be one of the most beneficial educational exposures of my life. 176 Kendrick: It was hard to translate to the likes of the Agrarian Reform group that that was an educational experience [laughter]. It was perceived in their eyes as providing Tejon with a special inroad into the University. Several Regents were named because they had stock in companies that were agriculturally oriented or serviced agriculture, or they owned farm property. That part of the suit was dropped, very early on. The Smith-Lever part of that suit was based on the fact that the Smith-Lever Act does not say specifically that extension personnel should engage in research. And of course, all the time that I was in office, and prior to my being there by a couple of years, extension made no bones of the fact that they were engaged in an applied, localized research program, and we expected our personnel to engage in that kind of program. And the allegation was that we were violating the spirit and the language of the Smith-Lever Act by diverting Smith-Lever funds into research activities and not strictly extension activities. We were prepared for a long argument with that because research is research is research is research. The act does say that education was conducted through meetings, workshops. publications, demonstrations, and otherwise. The demonstrations are used by our colleagues in other states to satisfy what we say is research. We were not joined enthusiastically by our colleagues in other states; they just turned their backs and ran the other way when the suit was filed. They didn't want to get swept up into it. U.S. Department of Agriculture's Reaction to the Lawsuit Kendrick: We had a very difficult time getting the Department of Agriculture to engage in any kind of interest in this suit, and in particular the extension unit of USDA. They felt they would have a difficult time, and they would lose the battle if they recognized the fact that we were engaged in research — overlooking the fact that we are required to file every year an annual plan of work in which we describe what we're going to do and also report what we had done. They sign off and approve it each year. Lage : But then, when the suit came up, they didn't want to step in to support — ? Kendrick: When the suit came up, they didn't want to have a thing to do with providing us with any testimony that the program was a good extension program. H 177 Kendrick: Finally, out of frustration with my federal extension office, I resolved it by going to the deputy secretary of agriculture, today's secretary of agriculture, Dick Lyng. Lage: Now, what administration was this? Kendrick: This was under John R. Block, of the Reagan administration. Under Bob Bergland of the Carter administration, I didn't have a lot of sympathy in the secretary's office. Early in his life as the secretary of agriculture — he'd been a congressman from Minnesota — he made a tour in California and had a conference in Fresno. And of course, when the secretary of agriculture travels around the country, he's got an entourage of people who want to talk to him. That's one office that doesn't have any trouble drawing a crowd. Although it's not a cabinet office of the stature of the secretary of defense or secretary of state, its constituency follows that secretary around like a fly does a piece of meat. Bergland listened to the same kind of allegations that I'd been listening to, and he made a statement in Fresno to the press that he was going to put a stop to any federal funds going into any mechanical aids to harvest. That stimulated me. I wrote an editorial about "Is the Department of Agriculture changing its policy?" Because it was such a sweeping statement; they were indicating that we were going to get the tractors out of the field; we weren't going to fund anything that was a mechanical aid to agriculture. And I couldn't believe that a person who knew anything at all about agriculture would make such a sweeping, blanket statement. And I began getting calls. "Are your federal funds cut off?" "No," I replied, "they were never touched, never in j eopardy. " Lage: No follow up on that statement? Kendrick: Nothing. Lage: What percentage of your funds were federal funds? Kendrick: About five percent. Lage: Oh, that small? Kendrick: Five percent Hatch funds. There were a lot of other federal funds that go into the total research program, but not through the Hatch fund, and that's what he was talking about. Lage: How about the response from Earl Butz? Was he more — ? 178 Kendrick: Earl was secretary under Richard Nixon, much earlier than the period of the trial. Well. Earl [laughs] was the typical, traditional, old-line agriculturalist. His support was unshakable. So I had no problem with Earl ever. I'd like to say a bit more about Secretary Block's deputy secretary of agriculture, Dick Lyng, who is the present secretary of agriculture. Dick and I started out life together here in California with the Reagan administration as governor. Dick was the deputy director of the Department of Agriculture at the time when I became the vice president for agricultural sciences. So we worked together for a while until he went to Washington to become a Washington bureau man. A bureaucrat, in a kind sense of the word. So I finally, in frustration, went to Dick and said, "You know, I'm getting nowhere in the department." It was resclved. Not enthusiastically by extension, I might add. They didn't provide the kind of testimony that I think they should, but it was not damaging. But my problem with the federal department is that they were ignoring a potential serious threat to Agricultural Extension nationwide. If we were to lose that suit on that issue, that meant that extension could not and should not engage in any kind of activity that passed as research. And that would just take them out of business. I don't think that the department and the administrators of the federal extension program appreciated that fact whatsoever. They should have been following this much more closely than that, and provided some kind of aid and assistance, or owned up to the fact that they were approving our work plan every year. The University's Response and Current Status of the Suit Lage: It sounds as if you took quite an active role in responding to the legal suit. How did that work within the University? There must have been a whole array of lawyers; how much did you have to devote to it? Kendrick: Well, it didn't take a lot of personal time from me, but I obviously was in touch with what going on, was consulted regularly about strategy. The people within the University pursuing the legal aspect of the suit were in the general counsel's office. The thing that's amusing about that is that the California Rural Legal Assistance group had about two lawyers. They were joined at one stage by Public Advocates, a public interest law firm in San Francisco, where there were two lawyers. They spent a lot of time taking depositions. Th-.y deposed, or at least they had plans to depose, about seventy or eighty people. 179 Kendrick: They filed suit in 1979, and they didn't go to trial until about '84. All that period was used to depose and collect data and look through many files. They would file a brief, and our general counsel's group would respond to it. We wore out one superior court judge in Alameda County, Judge [Spurgeon] Avakian, who got ill in the course of the trial. And so it was declared a mistrial, and we had to start all over again with another Alameda County Superior Court judge, Judge [Raymond] Marsh. He is a sitting judge in Hayward. I became pretty well acquainted with a good many members of the general counsel's office, and of course I was a colleague of the general counsel, the late Don Reidhaar and his successor [James E. Hoist], who took more than a casual interest in the suit. But Gary Morrison was the member of the general counsel's staff who really had the primary responsibility for the suit. George Marchand was a colleague; Christine Helwick was another one. The names of the others don't come to mind, but there were about six lawyers in the general counsel's office who, when the CRLA suit was on the docket, were all engaged in this thing. So we had numerous conferences over strategy and what to do next. The status of the suit now is as follows (then we can kind of draw this session to an end): I had hoped that maybe we would have this suit resolved before the time I retired, but that was a hope beyond fulfillment. On the research issue as far as extension was concerned, the judge in Alameda County, Judge Marsh, has indicated that he does not agree with the allegation, and he is prepared to rule that that's not an issue. He would be ruling in favor of the University, on that point. (This is a trial before the judge; there's no jury involved.) The plaintiffs on their own dropped the conflict of interest allegation — Lage : Do you know why they did that? Kendrick: They didn't have a case. Lage: They just couldn't develop anything. Kendrick: No. They have also dropped the public trust act violation. We were prepared to go to bat on that one because we thought we'd win that fairly easily. That leaves just the experiment station — Lage: The Hatch Act. Kendrick: The Hatch Act. Now, the judge has indicated that he feels the University does not have a process to evaluate proposed research projects on whether or not they are going to cause an adverse or 180 Kendrick: a beneficial impact on farm labor and small farmers. And, in one of these conferences that we had with the general counsel's office, at their suggestion, as a strategy, we agreed to accept that allegation, accept the judge's ruling. Because, as I said, we can't prove that we have a process that evaluates each project on the basis of whether or not there will be a benefit or adverse effect on agricultural labor and small farmers. And we don't think we have to. That's not the way you evaluate projects. There's nothing in the law, in the Hatch Act, that says the program is developed to aid small farmers, and the judge's interpretation was that we were supposed to evaluate each research project on its impact on small family farmers and labor. Lage: But, not necessarily evaluating impacts on the processing industry and other industries? Kendrick: No. It's very specific. But the Hatch Act itself says nothing about size or ownership of agriculture. It just says develop a healthy agricultural economy and aid in the full employment. Well, the judge also is asking the University to provide him with a proposed process of how we would go about doing this evaluation. It's obvious that we've lost that issue at this level, which is a very fundamental issue as far as we are concerned. And so in the interest of speeding it along and getting it into the appellate court, we agreed to the stipulation. And that's where it is. Lage: Now. when you say "in the interest of speeding it along — ?" Kendrick: We'll appeal to the District Court of Appeals. Just as soon as he makes that ruling, the appeal will be filed. We've read the Hatch Act too. Lage: How does having this kind of gigantic suit hanging over your head and over the entire division — how does that affect you? Kendrick: Well, there was no punitive action. I wasn't going to go to jail, wasn't going to be fined, or anything like that — it was an annoyance. I felt that, in the first place, it's a social argument; it does not belong in courts. When the trial actually got activated and started in Alameda County with Judge Avakian. I was down there the first day, and it was a media event. I also made sure that we were not unilaterally outrepresented by the critics, that we had some farm people coming from the local areas. It was a small courtroom, filled with more people than there was space for. and the media trying to get pictures and interviews. Lage: It had a lot of public interest. 181 Kendrick: But the interesting thing is that the plaintiffs read the initial statement, and it went on, and on, and on, and on. It got to be past two o'clock, and two-thirty. Well, it was getting past all the deadlines, and all the media people were picking up their stuff and they were getting out of there by that time [laughs]. It was really kind of a lost cause. Well, I had an opportunity to make a few comments, so that we were not devoid of at least having our difference of opinion expressed. Marjorie Sun from Science magazine came out to cover that opening trial, and I spent some time with her. I felt that my viewpoint was fairly represented by the media; I don't feel that we were roasted unchallenged. But the CRLA knows how to use the media very effectively, even more so than the academic community that I'm associated with does, and their timing in using the media was also very good. I think that our public information group needs to tone up a little bit and play that game professionally and not just react to it. But the problem, as I say, that I had with the trial, is that they began to assemble their expert witnesses. One came from Cornell, and one came from UC Santa Cruz, and one agricul tural economist who had retired from Missouri and was living in California. Their testimony was this same kind of theme of agrarian reform, that the ownership in agriculture was in the hands of business and business-oriented activities and enterprises; it was getting bigger and bigger; and the University was forcing it into bigger units. The University was charged with paying little attention to the sociological displacements that were taking place for people engaged in agriculture, and the exploitation of labor to the gain of the business community. There really was no truth to the allegations. There certainly is no conspiracy as far as the University is concerned. They were attempting to lay the groundwork to prove that we were using public money for private gain; that we were engaged in research which we shouldn't pursue; and to demonstrate that large farm units caused poorer surrounding communities than small farm units. The witnesses compared agricultural development in the west side of the San Joaquin Valley with that in the east side of the San Joaquin Valley, where there is a lot of difference other than just size of the farms. The west side is made up of large acreages of primarily cotton and grain. They got themselves into trouble with selenium and dust and poor economics, and their community support areas are not very good. They're younger, for one thing. The east side is a much more pleasant side of the San Joaquin Valley to live in. There are older established communities; there is orchard-type agriculture. They tend to be smaller units because you don't generally have a thousand acres 182 Kendrick: Lage : Kendrick: of tree fruits and nuts under one ownership. Water availability is different, and there are just a lot of differences other than size of the agricultural units. But the discussions were all sociologically-based differences of opinion, and it was a little bit like the Bork hearings. Do you want to legislate from the bench, or do you want to interpret the existing law? I am an unabashed exponent — I don't want the judicial branch making law. I'm perfectly willing to go to Sacramento, to the legislature, and argue and agonize and go through this whole process, because they're charged with the responsibility of paying attention to societal needs. But it does not belong in the court. Did the tension, the media tension, subside? It evaporated very quickly, [laughter] Lasted twenty- four hours. Academic Freedom and the Independence of the Regents Lage: Did the suit have the effect of bringing pressure to bear on you from the President's Office or from the Regents? Kendrick: No. Well, the active part of the suit got started in trial stage at the very end of Saxon's presidency, and most of it has been taking place under President David Gardner. David is totally supportive of hanging in there and proving our point. I had no particular pressure from the Board of Regents, other than from Regent Vilma Martinez at one point. She was getting a little noise from some of the plaintiffs pursuing the suit and hoped that we could reach an amicable compromise and give some attention to what the complaints were. But there's no room to compromise on this issue, as far as I'm concerned, of academic freedom and intrusion. It's a case One of the interesting things about this — the constitutional independence of the Regents goes back almost to the origin of the University itself, but not quite. It goes back probably to the 1890s. One of the major problems that the Board of Regents faced back in those 1880s, 1870s. came from the California Grange. The agricultural interests were really getting in there, and they were exercising an undue amount of influence, trying to influence direction, because they felt that they were going to be disadvantaged in the University if it became a University of California rather than a college of agriculture, with all its resources devoted to their needs. 183 Kendrick: And the resulting interference of this aggie group of people [laughter] resulted in constitutional independence for the Regents. So here we are 115 years later, on the other side of the issue, in which the people are trying to influence the direction and program through the courts. Now, there are ways to do that, but not by mandating through the courts that we do specific kinds of things. You ask the legislature to appropriate money, and you fight it out. The program in sustainable agriculture is a new program responding to a legislative interest and a legislative appeal by people who felt that they were being neglected by the University's agricultural program — people in organic fanning and nontraditional farming methods. Lage: So that came in through legislative directives and appropriation? Kendrick: Yes. So now we have a fairly substantial program centered on the Davis campus, with a new director, in sustainable agriculture, serving the new clientele that we haven't served before. Lage: As we go along, maybe we can talk about some other programs that have come along. I think it's a good stopping point; do you agree? Kendrick: Okay, good. 184 X THE RESEARCH BUDGET FOR THE AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION The Fixed Costs of Permanent Academic Staff Salaries [Date of interview: October 16. 1987] ## Lage : Today is October 16, 1987. This is the eighth session with James Kendrick, and today we're going to move into the Agriculture Experiment Station: administration, special problems, and new research directions. Kendrick: Yes. I believe at the last session I talked about modifying the agricultural advisory committee and broadening its representation beyond commodity agriculture that had been represented almost exclusively on the previous committee. That was only the beginning of trying to broaden the research program of the experiment station, or at least recognize the fact that there were other sources who were anxious to be heard from, as well as expecting some activity from research conducted by members of the experiment station. I also had referred to the fact in an earlier session that the flexibility of funding the experiment station was really not very great — even though it had a large budget of state- appropriated funds and represented about 60 percent of the state- appropriated money for the University's organized research category. Lage: And that's a line item, directed to the experiment station? Kendrick: Yes, it was identified for agriculture. And it has always been somewhat of a source of envy by other elements of the University. If there's a hundred million dollar appropriation for the University's organized research, agriculture gets sixty million of it. It appears that Jim Kendrick, the vice president, had a sixty million dollar freestanding research fund to allocate, and that agriculture was particularly favored in the state appropria tion over all the other organized research units of the University. 185 Kendrick: There are no other organized research units in the University that fund as much of the permanent staff as agriculture does. Lage: Of the University's permanent staff? Kendrick: Of the University's permanent faculty and staff. Lage: So that budget pays for part of the faculty salaries of those who have a dual appointment in a department and in the experiment station? Kendrick: That's correct. About 500 academic FTE in the experiment station, and those 500 academic FTE are experiment station faculty. Lage: Could you define FTE again? Kendrick: Full time equivalent, another budgetary term used to identify positions of the experiment station. Most members of the experiment station average about 70 percent FTE in the experiment station- funded portion of their salary, which is related to the time that they're expected to spend on the experiment station program. The balance of their appointment and salary, or 30 percent, comes out of another budgetary category called instruction and research [I & R], This is the category that funds the general faculty of the University of California, and the title series that is associated with it contains the professorial ranks. It's that mix of FTE between the experiment station FTE, and the I & R FTE, where the vice president and the chancellor must agree to fund when we are allocating a vacant position to a par ticular department and program. So that process drives a coopera tive relationship between the President's Office and the chancellor in deciding how the allocations of resources are to be made. But that 60 percent of the University's organized research appropriation is what stands out in the budget. And considering how many organized research units there are in the total University system, there isn't much money left to go around those other units. So what really happens is that these other units wind up using that state-appropriated funding to fund their core administrative staff. Anybody who comes into those units to conduct a research program depends largely on external grants and contracts for their supporting funding. So what in essence happens is that the state of California is the granting agency for agricultural research. Precedent for that goes back in history, in the fact that the state and the University in partnership set up a research program for agriculture to serve agriculture in the state, and it has continued ever since. 186 Lage: Is that an obligation under the land grant college legislation? Kendrick: Yes. The mandate of the Morrill Act required instruction in agriculture, mechanic arts, and military tactics to qualify as a land grant institution. That's why we find some land grant institutions in the United States still bearing a title like Texas A and M — Texas Agriculture and Mechanics Institute. That also, I believe, is the reason why the Mechanics Institute in San Francisco maintained a spot on the Board of Regents for so many years, as an ex officio member, because that was a response to this same mandate that mechanics be a part of the instructional offering of a land grant institution. So agriculture was embedded in the formation of the University of California as a land grant institution. Legislative Protection for Agricultural Research in the 1967 Reagan Budget Lage: Prior to your coming to the vice presidency, in 1966 reapportionment of the state legislature affected agriculture's power in the legislature. How did that affect your appropriations? Kendrick: It didn't affect the appropriation policy as much as it affected the environment in which I found our program received in Sacramento. Let me not overlook a little incident that I inherited that was somewhat difficult to deal with, stemming from activities of the legislature. You're quite perceptive in asking about the effect of reapportionment of the legislature and the adoption of the one-person, one-vote representation on agriculture's influence in the legislature. These actions changed vastly and forever the kind of legislative influence that rural California — and rural areas in other states — exerted over appropriations and programs that were of public interest. Prior to that change in reapportionment and the one-person, one-vote edict, the legislature was under the control of rural California, both in the senate and the assembly. And agriculture, being as important as it was in the rural community of California, was an important power to deal with. To the extent that they voiced opinions about what they thought we ought to be paying attention to, the University's agricultural division usually responded, and the appropriations were supplied in due course to carry those concerns forward. 187 Kendrick: I don't mean to imply that these appropriations and programs were forced upon the University. Most were conceived and lobbied for by interested University people. But success in achieving these appropriations was more certain in the rural-dominated legislature. Some of the successful programs and special appropriations for them were pear decline, agricultural mechanization, and the establishment of the departments of nematology at both Davis and Riverside. About the time I came up here, just a year before, was the inauguration of the Reagan years as governor [1967]. He greeted the University with a budget cut. Part of the budget cut was due to trying to get the bankrupt state back in good financial condition, but I think part of it was due to the general unhappiness he had with what was going on as far as Vietnam and the student activities, the Free Speech Movement, and the whole array of protests that were going on. Reagan, representing the kind of law and order mentality that he brought into that office, was anxious to set things in order. That's a whole other story which will be revealed in other people's oral histories. But it did result in an action in Sacramento that instituted about an 8 percent budget cut. Lage: For the entire University? Kendrick: For the entire University. But what happened as far as agriculture was concerned was that some of our friends — and I don't know just where they came from, but I suspect it was some of the organized commodity groups — prevailed upon the legislative representatives with whom they were dealing to protect the organized research appropriation for agriculture. And they had written into the law that, while the University overall was going to take an 8 percent reduction, agriculture was not to be cut more than 3 percent. So the agricultural representatives in the legislature had protected the program, at the expense of the rest of the programs in the University, and particularly the other organized research units. If I had been on board prior to that happening, I would have never allowed that differential to exist, because I inherited ill feelings and ill will within the institution that I didn't need. If the institution was going to take a reduction, we should have taken our share. But that was another environment that I had to deal with in setting subsequent budgets because I was always reminded that "Yes, in 1967 you were protected, and we had to make up your difference," Lage: The organized research units still had the overall 8 percent reduction? 188 Kendrick! Lage: Kendrick: The overall 8 percent was still enforced. So then some of the units less capable of absorbing that kind of reduction had to take more than 8 percent. Now, who did you hear from in matters like this? get these messages? Where did you Well, in the President's budget office and other vice presidents dealing with academic programs. The academic vice president would remind me from time to time that the organized research units that reported to him suffered at the expense of protecting agriculture. And in years even President Saxon condoned allocating a larger cut into Cooperative Extension than the rest of the institution was experiencing, and that resulted in another political maneuver in Sacramento which didn't sustain the President's recommendation, and the President's Office was forced to take another look at allocating reductions. What I'm really describing is the fact that agriculture, while not in control of the agenda, was still influential enough in the political process that it could prevent somebody else frcm doing harmful things to them. So their role changed. Instead of being proactive, in terms of initiating things, they were being reactive and played the role of minority representation. Since this state government operates — particularly in the appropriation process, the budgetary process — on the basis of line-item veto by the governor, and the legislature's power to override that veto requires a two-thirds majority in both houses to do so, in a sense, agriculture maintained a kind of protective skin, so to speak, over the whole agricultural program in this state. Well, sometimes that works to our advantage, and other times it is a disadvantage. I found my attitude was one of trying to live with the whole and not trying to exploit my differences with the rest of the institution. I felt it was important that groups other than just the agricultural representation go to bat for agriculture. Otherwise, in due course, we'd go downhill as the state became increasingly urbanized, and as fewer and fewer units in agriculture continued to exist. It just seemed to me the long-term interest in agriculture programs resided in broadening the program so that it was not just a farming unit service area, and that there was some value in offering its program to those consumers and urbanites as much as it did to the organized agriculture. That was a philosophic point of view that I tried to bring to bear throughout all of my administration. And I attempted to work closely with my colleagues in the President's Office and with the chancellors, to get them to feel some degree of comfort and some degree of interest in preserving a program of research that was clearly a public service-oriented kind of activity. 189 Kendrick: I was reminded of this special favoritism for agriculture by several of the chancellors at the time, too, particularly at UCLA and Berkeley, and they didn't like it too well. The Davis and Riverside chancellors were less condemning of that particular thing, because they had a special interest in [laughs] not having to deal with that cut in agricultural research. Now, let me get back to the research budget for agriculture. Of the total amount, about 80 percent is associated with regular faculty and staff salaries. And that is not well understood, even by members of the budget group in the President's Office. It was that 80 percent of the budget that was directly allocated to campuses without even coming through my office which went to support the salaries of those regular members of the three colleges that house most of the personnel engaged in experiment station research. So 80 percent of the budget for agricultural research was a non-flexible state appropriation. Lage: You don't have control over it. Kendrick: No control. The Field Station System. Tulelake to Imperial Valley; Another Fixed Cost Kendrick: Now, the remaining 20 percent of the agricultural research budget goes out in various ways. There are a number of research units that are parts of the experiment station. We have to support our field station system, consisting of nine locations in the state of California, all the way from Tulelake to the Imperial Valley. Tulelake is near KLamath Falls, just across the border from Oregon in the very northeast corner of Siskiyou County. The Tulelake station is where the ice minus experiment was conducted. Tulelake was selected because it is a potato growing area where late spring frosts occur, and the test was conducted on potatoes to protect them from frost damage. There are two large range stations, larger than three thousand acres. One is the Sierra Foothill Range Station. It was established to study cattle — cattle grazing and all the problems associated with range-fed cattle. It is located east of Marysville, in the foothills of the Sierras, near one branch of the Yuba River. Then there is a similar range station greater than four thousand acres, the Hopland Station. It's located in the Coast Range near Hopland. That was established to study sheep grazing and all the problems associated with sheep raising. It also was 190 Kendrick: a source of wildland studies, and much information was developed on that station about deer herds, dealing with deer and their native environment and how to keep the size of the herds within reason. Lage: Did they do any mountain lion studies there? Kendrick: I think they may have. They did a pretty complete coyote study, researching the control of coyotes in the process of raising sheep. There are three field stations in the San Joaquin Valley, one called the Kearney Horticultural Field Station, which is our major field station in the system of nine. Kearney is near Reedley, and Reedley is close to Parlier, which is the post office address for the Kearney Field Station. It's about twenty miles south and a little east of Fresno. Then there is the West Side Field Station, which is located at Five Points. It is not close to anything. It is southwest of Fresno about forty miles, and is out in that West Side agricultural development which was developed with the completion of the California water aqueduct. It is devoted largely to the field crops and cotton, which are characteristic of the agriculture in that region. The Kearney Horticultural Field Station, as the name implies, deals with fruits, nuts, vines, as well as some of the vegetable crops, and other crops that are characteristic of the east side of the San Joaquin Valley. And the Lindcove Field Station is a little northeast of Visalia, and a little southeast of Kearney. It's within twenty- five or thirty miles of the Kearney station, but it is just at the beginning of the Sierra foothill area. It's in the area where citrus was developed as it moved out of southern California into the San Joaquin Valley. Its primary activity is devoted to citrus research. If We have also a station in the middle of the metropolitan area of Santa Clara, which at one time was a very intense agricultural region. It's not a large station, but it is totally surrounded by urban area. It originally was devoted to deciduous fruits, and it is called the Deciduous Fruit Field Station. The deciduous fruits — plums, prunes, and apricots, were once prominent in that region's agriculture, and so were strawberries. But work at that station now is predominantly related to ornamental and urban agriculture. 191 Kendrick: Then we have a field station in Orange County, which is fast becoming surrounded by urban development. But it was once Irvine Company property adjacent to the El Toro Marine Corps Air Base. It was established to provide some breathing room for some of the horticultural work that was being conducted at UCLA when UCLA phased out its agricultural program. One of my predecessors, Dan Aldrich, was given the unhappy assignment of closing down all of agriculture at UCLA and relocating it at Davis and Riverside. One person went back to Berkeley. Lage: So there was a precedent to the threat to close it down at Berkeley. Kendrick: Yes. That's not my story — I didn't have to inherit that. I was involved in the results of that because at the time I was chairman of the Department of Plant Pathology at Riverside and UCLA, and we had four people at UCLA in our department. The department was, however, always managed from Riverside. Our teaching unit was located at UCLA, where the students were. And in the course of the period when I was chair, I had to help negotiate what we were going to do with the positions and the people at UCLA. In plant pathology, two of the people who were at UCLA moved to Riverside and became resident members of our department. A third member retired from the position. The fourth member of that department did not want to come to Riverside, and we ultimately negotiated a spot for him in Berkeley. That was all taking place when I was chair of the department. The same thing happened to entomology. They had some people move to Riverside into the entomology department. There were also three or four people engaged in ornamental horticulture at UCLA, all of whom were relocated in the ornamental horticulture program at Davis. So eventually the program was phased down, although not completely while I was the chairman of the department at Riverside, because as a vice president, I recall there were a few people still at UCLA, an associate director of the experiment station at UCLA, Sid Cameron, who became a part of my Agricultural Advisory Council, or Administrative Council. He was succeeded in that role by Van Stoutemeyer, a horticultural ist. So there were at least three or four people who were sufficiently advanced in their careers that moving them just made no human sense. Lage: Sounds like it's hard to operate without a department to back you up. Kendrick: Well, there was a little bit of the teaching program remaining so they moved into botany and conducted the program. There were, I think, three or four people left at UCLA to finish out their careers. 192 Kendrick: I guess you could say that the negotiation of the phaseout of agriculture at UCLA started under Aldrich, proceeded under Peterson, and the final dot at the end of the paragraph wasn't completed until I had a little bit to do with it. I recall that the negotiations on where some of the supporting resources and the vacated positions were going to go were conducted by Mack Dugger, the dean and associate director of the experiment station at Riverside, and David Saxon. David at the time was the executive vice chancellor at UCLA, so we had an early relationship with David before he became president. Lage: So did we name all the field stations? Kendrick: No. we've got one more to go. I digressed a little bit because that Orange Coast Field Station, as I indicated, was selected so that it could serve the faculty of the experiment station from Riverside as well as UCLA, an easy run by the automobile from both places. But it ultimately became a place where activity in citrus and avocado research were predominant, with a little bit of ornamental horticulture and turf research also conducted there. We had an important strawberry breeding program also at that station. Lage: Has that been taken over by urbanization also? Kendrick: Well, it's been quite a while since I've been to that station. I'm told that there's a lot of urban encroachment. The Irvine Company is in the land development business as well as agriculture, but I think their agricultural activity is minimal. The last — the ninth — field station is in Imperial County. It's called the Meloland Field Station, in the Imperial Valley. The proper name is the Imperial Valley Field Station. There's a little railroad siding there, and I think it's called Meloland. It is about five miles east of El Centre. It, as one would expect, is devoted to the kind of crops that are characteristic of the Imperial Valley. The Imperial Valley is an interior desert valley that has been developed because of water available through the Colorado River Compact. There is an aqueduct that comes from the Colorado River and irrigates the Imperial Valley. It also is the source of most of the water for the Salton Sea. Well, that's quite an extensive system of field stations, but it certainly is not overwhelming. It's not as large as some of the other states that have field stations. The main difference is that our University field stations do not conduct programs on their own. They are managed as facilities for the regular experiment station personnel located on the campuses, and for the extension personnel — both specialists and farm advisors — to conduct their field research work on. We had a few permanently located research people and some extension people 193 Kendrick: located at Imperial and at Kearney. But for the most part, the staff located at the field stations were support staff and a mixture of field station personnel as well as some department- assigned supporting staff. Field stations in other states conduct independent research and extension programs on their own. I like it the way we manage it because it meant we didn't have a lot of independent programs. Our field research program was under the management of our regular faculty and staff. We got off on this topic because the field station system is one of the allocations of the 20 percent of the budget remaining after the 80 percent nonflexible funding that is part of the experiment station appropriation. Lage : So field stations were another sort of fixed cost. Kendrick: They certainly were. It's a fixed cost in the sense that to achieve any flexibility meant closing down a facility or discharging people. It is not a source of funds that's available for annual reallocation, as grant funds usually are. The Statewide Critical Applied Research [SCAR] Fund Kendrick: There were about a million dollars worth of these special funds composed of several special funds such as the previously mentioned pear decline funds. Ultimately we solved the pear decline problem, and so the question was, what do you do with those funds? Lage: Did the appropriation end, or — ? Kendrick: No, it was fixed into the budget. All those special appropriations were part of the general budget. They were indexed to inflation so, in due course, they had increased accordingly. Lage: Once the problem's been solved, isn't there some way to say — ? Kendrick: Well, what I did was say, "I think it's foolish to identify these funds as pear decline funds." What we should do is identify them as pear research funds. As long as there's a problem in pears, it will get first call on those funds, and if there's no critical need for pear research, why, as far as I'm concerned, it's fair game for allocation to other kinds of general problems. I would try to keep it somewhat related, but I wasn't concerned that it necessarily go back to pear decline. 194 Kendrick: The pear decline funds had lost their identity with anyone other than those preparing the budget, and the proponents of the special appropriations in the legislature had long since moved on. So there was really no watchdog for them. And since we had a number of these earmarked original appropriations, what we did was ultimately combine them into what was called the Statewide Critical Applied Research Fund [SCAR Fund], which was a grant fund amounting to about a million dollars. This was helpful because it meant we had some degree of flexibility to allocate on short notice to activities that were directed towards a crisis. We tried to keep the funds strictly within the definition of critical applied research to contrast it with the long-term basic research activities that were by and large funded through grants made by the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, and other federal agencies. We had more money coming into our program from those kinds of sources, federal sources, which were the result of the individual faculty members' own entrepreneurship and gr ant sman ship, than we had from the USDA formula funds. As a matter of fact, we had twice as much coming from other federal agencies as we had from the Hatch funds. We never felt that the Hatch funds were that significant in determining our program, which was another reason that I resented the accusations from the suit of the California Rural Legal Assistance that implied that because our program was unduly influenced by agribusiness and private industry, we were misusing Hatch funds. There was no way to trace exactly how Hatch funds were being used because they were co-mingled with other programs and with other funding. Lage: Hatch funds were just sort of a general appropriation? Kendrick: Hatch funds arrived at the University on a formula basis. And the formula was derived by a ratio of rural population to urban population and numbers of farming units. California suffered from that ratio, that index, because the numbers of farming units in California were not as great as in many southern states, and the rural population — Lage: If there were smaller farms, California would have gotten more money? Kendrick: The rural population in relation to urban population [laughs] was also not something that favored California's distribution of Hatch money. So our share of Hatch allocations was really not very large in relation to the value of our agriculture. A number of us always thought that we ought to place in that index the value of the product, but we didn't get beyond the talking stages in that. It's not easy to reallocate a funding source that has become no standard and so traditional that it has really become part of your base budget. So you don't take money away from 195 Kendrick: Lage: Kendrick: Lage: Kendrick: Kentucky or Tennessee or North Carolina or Florida and reallocate it to California, which already has got one of the largest agricultural budgets of any of the land grant institutions in the states. We stand out like a sore thumb among all states, but we stand out because the state of California has always taken more than a modest interest in supporting agriculture, and they have appropriated accordingly. Now, where were we? We've shown how there was not a lot of flexibility in the program. This is one of the themes you wanted to discuss, how introduce flexibility into the program. to Yes. And this is one of the techniques, combining some of these specialized funds. Another source of those specialized funds was the ag mechanization funding. It became a part of the total Statewide Critical Applied Research Fund. There was one enlightened appropriation early on in my tenure supported by Vice President Oswald in spite of the terrible environment that I was experiencing. It was a designated appropriation requested through the regular budgetary process. It was not difficult to convince the State Department of Finance representatives and the Assembly's Ways and Means Committee representatives, after they understood the fixed nature of the total appropriation, that we could improve our ability to respond quickly, if there was some undesignated funding. So a modest amount of funding at our request, something like $250,000, was appropriated, and it ended up in this unrestricted funding source. I had help from the President's budget office; Loren Furtado was instrumental in shaping the budget in those years. He saw the need and was somewhat sympathetic and helped shape the request and justification. He was a University employee? He was from the University budget office. Vice President Oswald and Loren Furtado were also helpful in my securing $100,000 of Regents' controlled funds to support agricultural research which was focused on innovation and change in direction. While these funds did not fit precisely our SCAR Fund purpose, they were welcome additions to our flexible funding sources. We continued to identify them as "Regents' Funds." The amount of allocatable funds available on an annual basis really was very modest, however, in relation to the size of the research effort of the experiment station. 196 Working with the State Department of Finance Lage: And how about the staff of these legislative committees that you mentioned? Did you work well with them? Kendrick: We worked with the Department of Finance, initially, in putting the budget together. That's the most critical stage of budgeting, as far as the state portion of our total operating budget was concerned. The summer and fall of the year is when the President's Office budget office group works almost daily with the Department of Finance, going through the budget item by item, justifying the allocations that the University is requesting, and providing arguments in support of what we think we need to run the institution. It's so critical to get items included in the governor's budget, because if it does not appear in the governor's budget, it is unlikely to be funded. Lage: So your first job is with the governor's people. Kendrick: The first job is with the Department of Finance, to get into the budget proposal the things that are needed because they, of course, are charged with the responsibility of putting the governor's budget together. That doesn't mean that the governor doesn't have a mind of his own and couldn't ask for things or ask that things be eliminated. But it is really the Department of Finance that is critical in putting this together. Lage: Would this be a time where you could perhaps compare the different governors' departments of finance and how they were to work with? Kendrick: Well, I can, yes. Let me finish the story of budgeting because I don't know if it's in Harry Wellman's oral history, or if it will be in dark Kerr's autobiography. The manner in which the budgeting process is carried forth is unique to California, and it's due to the fact that there's a line-item veto available to the governor. Lage: So if something is added by the legislature that wasn't in the governor's budget, it's likely to be vetoed. Kendrick: That's precisely the case. And that's why it's so critical to have desired items included in the budget as presented to the legislature by the governor. The legislature doesn't have to appropriate everything that the governor asks for. Often they don't. That most often results in us not getting that item because the governor, while permitted to veto, is not permitted to add items back that the legislature has eliminated. So the process after the ' udget is put before the legislature is all downhill. 197 Lage: I see. It's a defensive action. Kendrick: It's a defensive action. If the legislature wants special items funded that they think are important and the governor didn't put in the budget, unless he (or she, as the case may someday be) feels that it's important, or is an oversight, or they're able to convince him otherwise, it will wind up on the cutting room floor and be vetoed as breaking his or her stated goal for the budget. And if the legislature doesn't like some of the governor's pet ideas, or some of the things that are put into it by the Department of Finance, they can refuse to appropriate money for them, and so we don't get those items either. So it's a no-win situation — once the budget is in the hands of legislature, it's fight for what you've got. And that characterizes a lot of our testimony before the legislature in support of budgets. We wind up for the most part supporting the governor's budget, regardless of party and relationships with the budget. i 198 XI THE AGRICULTURAL DIVISION AND GOVERNORS REAGAN. BROWN. AND DEUKMEJIAN Relationships with the Reagan Administration Reagan Advisors Earl Coke and Allan Grant Kendrick: During the Reagan administration, our relationship in agriculture was pretty good, better than the rest of the University. Part cf that, and maybe even a major share of that, in my opinion, was due to the fact that Governor Reagan's agricultural advice came primarily from two sources: Earl Coke and Allan Grant. Earl Coke was formerly director of Agricultural Extension for the University, in the period between B. H. Crocheron and George Alcorn. So he was the second director of the Agricultural Extension Service. ff Earl was quite revered by California's agriculture, organized and otherwise, and also knowledgeable about the University, as a former employee. He started out as an ag extension specialist in agronomy. He was, at the time that I moved in to my spot, secretary for California's Agriculture and Services Agency, and his director of agriculture, in Calif orria's Department of Agriculture, was Richard Lyng, Dick Lyng, who is the present United States secretary of agriculture. Allan Grant was not only president of the California Farm Bureau Federation, but he was president of the State Board of Food and Agriculture, then known as the State Board of Agriculture. Later it changed its name when the department became the Department of Food and Agriculture. He was also, as president of the State Board of Agriculture, an ex officio Regent. So the governor had, as far as he was concerned, two very strong advocates for agr-'.culture as his close personal advisors. With Harry Wellman, at luncheon for formal presentation of Wellman 's oral history, January 1977. Evelyn and Jim Kendrick, October 1981. The California State Board of Agriculture, at last meeting with Governor Ronald Reagan, December, 1975. Left to Right: Jim Kendrick, Al Tisch, Allan Grant, Governor Reagan, Wes Sawyer, Herb Fleming, Director Bru Christensen, Emil Mrak, Cordner Gibson. 199 Interpreting the University's Mission to the Ag Staff and Communi ty Lage : Allan Grant. I noticed in the editorials in California Farmer. seemed exceedingly upset with the University in the period of '68. '69. Kendrick: Yes. The sources of his unhappiness with the University were the same sources that caused the unhappiness that the governor exhibited. These were the perceived seeming lack of resolve to punish and admonish the confrontations, the strikes, the sit- downs, and rowdy behavior, in their view, by students who were opposed to the U.S. policy in the Vietnam engagement. Lage: Did he carry that over to his attitude towards your division? Kendrick: No. I had mentioned earlier in one of our sessions that one of the attitudes I often encountered in Cooperative Extension was a feeling that they were not a part of the University of California, particularly those people who were located in offices in regions of California which were pretty conservative. They tended to look at the University of California as them, and those of tis are different, and we aren't sympathetic towards that sort of thing. I tried to remind them that, rather than criticize the University of California in its generic sense, to recognize its comprehensiveness and explain that they were also a part of the University of California, and anyone who wanted to condemn the University of California in its totality were in a sense condemning the agricultural extension program also. I thought that they ought to stand up and be counted, indicating that the University was a diverse collection of ideas and people like them. The noisy ones at the moment were being somewhat rude and obstreperous. That the University was a collection of differences; it wasn't a collection of monolithic ideas. Lage: Was this hard to get across to your own staff? Kendrick: Absolutely. They couldn't see it. Particularly, I would say, the Cooperative Extension personnel located in the counties — not necessarily those that were located on campuses because they were exposed to the campus environments — but three-fifths of the Cooperative Extension people were in county-based offices. And so they were influenced considerably by local community attitudes and politics. Mot only they, but their clients and constituencies, would frequently ask and complain about the fact that the University didn't appear to speak or advocate the same position. "You're inconsistent. You've got critics in biological control that condemn the use of pesticides, and you've got those that believe that pesticide use is the only way to control the pests. Why don't you make up your mind, so that we understand what's going on?" 200 Kendrick: I would say to those people. "Don't try to hold us to a single, uniformly expressed point of view. The University has no point of view. It is a home for intellectual inquiry and expression, which is not going to be uniform and monolithic. If you've got an expert on one side of an issue, I can find another expert on the other side of the issue, and we'll have a lively debate. And you can make up your mind which one you want to believe. But don't expect us to do so for you." Often I would get a plea from some particularly irate citizen, who seemed to be offended by a particular statement or point of view, saying, "You better get ahold of that person and stop them from saying this!" And I'd say, "Not on your life. I can't stop anybody from saying anything. I can expect them to justify and provide the basis for what they claim to believe, and are expressing, but I won't force them to change their opinion. I'm not running a censorship agency." Protection for Philosophical Differences in the Faculty Promotion Process Lage: Did you find that there were times when faculty in the Experiment Station who may have expressed unpopular points of view regarding, say, mechanization, or large farms versus small farms, or any of these controversial issues, were hindered in their advancement at the University? Kendrick: I have no evidence that that ever took place. One of the most vocal critics of the traditional pest control systems with a heavy emphasis on chemicals was the late Robert Van den Bcsch, a colleague of mine at Riverside who moved to Berkeley and was a member of the Department of Entomology and the Division of Biological Control. His criticism was often times cynical, sarcastic, and somewhat barbed. He became a very popular person to quote in the press. His descriptions were vivid and appealing, as far as the public media were concerned. But I'm not aware that Bob ever missed an advancement or a promotion for those reasons. I vigorously defended his right to express himself. I didn't happen to agree with him, but he was certainly at liberty to pursue his academic rights to be a critic. So that we had a good relationship even though we differed on many issues that he found time to criticize. There were others. I think the Biological Control group felt that they were under siege a good part of the time, and we tried to organize them a little closer into the Department of Entomology here at Berkeley. This precipitated a world-wide letter-writing campaign suggesting that we were doing away with Biological Control because we didn't like their criticisms and we 201 Kendrick: didn't agree with their programs, which was not the case at all. We were just trying to tighten up the management a little bit and get them to become more a part of the physical environment of the Department of Entomology. We've kind of digressed here, but this was another one of those battles that took place during my regime when we were trying to reorganize the way things were being handled here at Berkeley. Riverside was on the fringe of that argument because the biological control people are entomologists, fundamentally. But they differ about 180 degrees with some of their entomological colleagues. They believe philosophically that entomologists who advocate pesticide control of insects are contaminating the environment, so the biological control specialists pursue a different tactic in controlling insects and weeds. And that is promoting biological warfare in a sense, by pitting one biological entity against another. So that philosophical difference was the source of a schism between the two groups that still exists today. They're not airily brought together in the collegia! environment. The people in the Division of Biological Control feel that if they were totally amalgamated and submerged into the Department of Entomology, which at both Riverside and Davis are large departments, they would lose the force of their ability to express themselves in the manner that they do now. It's really a case of preserving the right, at least the opportunity, to exist somewhat separately. They felt that a structure of separatism was exceedingly important to them, in being able to express this different philosophy. Lage: Did they win that battle, or were they — ? Kendrick: Yes. They still are separate. Lage: It's a separate department, or — ? Kendrick: A division. It's a subunit of the Department of Entomology at both Riverside and Berkeley. I continue to believe that they would be better off being a little more a part of the entomology department. But I believe that they should be allowed to preserve themselves as a subunit and express their philosophical points of view just as strongly as the economic entomologists, who essentially are identified as the pesticide group. The urge to kill things with chemicals has passed. I think we've gotten through that era of pest control. And we're into the much more enlightened era of developing strategies to control diseases and pests. But the transition has left a lot of raw edges. 202 Kendrick: The question you asked about whether these differences of opinion from the standard opinions were detrimental to the advancement of those who expressed them, and I have to say that I have no evidence that they were. I think if we were to ask some of the people who expressed them, they might suggest otherwise. So I'm not sure that the evidence is very clear on one side or the other because advancement and promotion are based upon good scientific work, and that is somewhat of a subjective analysis by your peers. There are some who will say, "Well, my peers were down on me because I've been criticising them all along." It would be hard to prove or disprove either case, but I think that you could also find critics of the quality or quantity of the work being done. Lage : In the promotion process, don't they go outside of their immediate department and maybe outside the college to get opinions? In agricultural economics, for instance, would they go outside of the immediate Department of Agricultural Economics for peer review? Kendrick: Each campus handles their promotion process slightly differently. but there are certain similar elements that characterize the University of California as a whole. When you are moving to tenure, or moving from an associate professorship to the professorship, or from the higher ranks of the professorship into the super grades, outside testimony is sought. The outside testimony, primarily, is from people in other institutions or other campuses, who are familiar enough with the work of the candidate that they can interpret the quality and the fundamental nature of the contributions. So that opinions are sought from people who have no axes to grind. They may not even know the individual, but because they happen to be working in the same field, they may know the candidate's work. When it comes to putting ad-hoc review committees together, you are not confined to members of your own department. You may have no more than one representative from your department, or you might have two. on a five-person committee. And they even go outside the colleges. You're at liberty to cover the campus. It is likely here at Berkeley that biologists from one life sciences area, in zoology or botany, would find themselves on committees evaluating plant pathologists. If they happened to be plant physiologically oriented, or biochemistry oriented, they might find people from biochemistry serving on the committee of someone who is engaged in the biochemistry of reactions, or viruses, or what-have-you. And then when you get to the budget committee, that next level that is placed there to iron out differences or biases, you're lucky to have anybody from agriculture on that committee on the Berkeley campus. There have been representatives from time to time, but it's a smal?. personnel 203 Kendrick: committee. The closest you're apt to get is someone from biology, or someone from social science who would take care of the economists. So the system is established to eliminate br'.as. Lage : It should offer some protection, although I'm sure there are subtle ways bias can be expressed. Kendrick: Well, it's the way letters are written, initially. The department chair plays a very important part in assembling all that information. The first action that takes place relative to an advancement is a vote of the tenured members of the faculty in all cases. In some cases, they include more than just tenured members in that decision. That's a campus option; it depends on how broadly they consult. If it's not a vote, at least it's an attempt to gain some consensus of whether or not the colleagues in the department feel that the candidate is qualified for the next step. If all the colleagues in the department have an opinion different from the chair, the chair must record that difference, and then that's the beginning of another problem. Supportive Oversight during Reagan Governorship Lage: So that took us off our original topic, but I think that I wanted to get to that at some point. We were talking about the differences between the different governors. Kendrick: The fact that Allan Grant, the Regent, and Earl Coke, the secretary in the cabinet, were both strong agriculture-oriented officials, placed the agriculture program in the University in the unique position of having oversight by supporters. They were quick to act and to comment when they felt that the budgetary process was being disadvantaged as far as agriculture was concerned. So I kind of "tiptoed through the tulips" in this relationship. I was pleased to have it, but I was also mindful of the fact that I was having to deal with that special protection that I inherited when the budget cut was allocated to the University in 1967 and agriculture was protected to the extent of that three percent cut overall. After Governor Reagan's initial unhappiness with the institution toward its seemingly mishandling or not handling protests, our budget for the total University was really treated very well. Governor Reagan ceased to have much direct involvement in University affairs. That didn't mean that some of his appointees didn't exercise considerable influence, including Alex Sheriffs, who was his educational advisor. 204 Kendrick: At one point Verne Orr was the director of finance; he was a pretty tight-fisted director of finance. Cap Weinberger was the director of finance at one point. That's where he got his reputation of Cap the Knife, because he was not very generous. You really had to fight for what you thought you needed during those years when Charlie Hitch was president. Confrontational Regents' Meetings, with Campus Administrators on the Defensive Kendrick: There was always a lot of tension on the Board of Regents between the Reagan appointees and those who had been appointed by the senior Governor Brown. Very different points of view, and there was still the residue of campus confrontations, teach-ins, and sit-ins, and one thing or another. It was during those periods that People's Park took place — this was in the early seventies — and we also had the National Guard in the streets some of this time. Regents' meetings became a target of protest, as far as students and eager faculty were concerned. We had a particularly frightening Regents' meeting very early in my vice presidency in '68 or '69 — probably the fall of •68 — at UCLA, in which the students surrounded the University dub where the meeting was being held. They broke in, or tried to break in, storming the place with rocks and breaking large glass windows. It was a hair-raising experience, bordering on a riot. The Regents had a little trouble getting out of the meeting when it was over. That meeting was followed soon by another hair-raising Regents' meeting on the Santa Cruz campus, in which another student-led protest resulted in their infiltration of the meeting room where shouting and confrontational tactics took place. There was a lot of anger expressed toward the governor and his representatives. And so when they would appear at Regents' meetings, a lot of that anger was vented in this confrontational setting. That really caused the Regents to decide that they would not meet on campuses any more. Up until that time, they had been moving from campus to campus to hold their meetings. So for the remaining period of President Hitch's presidency and most of the period of President Saxon's, the Regents' meetings were held — one north, one south — in the Extension Centers. Ultimately, the Regents got so fed up with the Extension Center in downtown Los Angeles, which was nothing more than a made-over Safeway store, that they moved to the L.A. 205 Kendrick: Convention Center. That was a little bit like holding it, well, in a convention center. That was where this famous meeting on the ag mechanization issue was held. But then Chancellor Young finally persuaded the Regents that they could have a well-controlled meeting at the West Center, which was the alumni center on the UCLA campus. And every time they went south subsequently, we met on the UCLA campus — which was not devoid of confrontations, but there seemed to be a little better control of things, and the volatility of the issues were less — were more localized. Vietnam and Free Speech were issues of the past. But Regents' meetings are still focal points for protest. Well, Governor Reagan and his appointed Regents, after causing the dismissal of Clark Kerr, expressed a certain amount of unhappiness with what he thought was mishandling of student unrest by Chancellor [Roger] Heyns. Roger was a master chancellor, but nearly every meeting he had to explain something that had happened the previous month — Lage: Did he handle the explanations well? Kendrick: He was a master at that. Roger was one of my favorite people.* And he just wore out, having to endure that kind of inquisition, it seemed to me. The topic of controversy could be a publication, an obscene publication, and he had to explain why that was a freedom that was allowed. Almost any subject that some Regent took issue with, he would be called to the table to explain what he was going to do about it, or what he had done about it, or why he didn't do something about it. It was also the period when Chancellor Chuck Young had agreed that Angela Davis could be hired as a faculty person, and he went through a period of trying to explain why someone who advocated communist rule would be welcomed to the University faculty. It was also the period when Bill McGill was chancellor at San Diego. f* He had a faculty member, overage, 'whose appointment was coming up for renewal, and that faculty person's name was Marcuse. * See Roger W. Heyns, Berkeley Chancellor, 1965-1971; The University in a Turbulent Society, Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft Library, 1987. 206 Lage: Herbert Marcuse. Kendrick: And our Regents — I don't mean all of them, but certainly Allan Grant represented this point of view very strongly — couldn't understand why the University could possibly expose students to that point of view. Marcuse was a Marxist, an advocate of that political system. In the face of the confrontations and the student riots, the chancellors at UCLA and Berkeley and San Diego seemed to condone this kind of nontraditional and nondemccratic thinking. It was all pretty hard for the Regents to swallow. And, of course, Clark Kerr was identified with opening up the campuses to the appearances of Communists and with free speech. That was all very impressionable, and as one of those who was part of the President's staff and trying to help poor Charlie keep the house in order, it was no time for me to make special pleadings for special considerations for agriculture. [laughs] Lage: Were you put in the position of trying to defend things, say, to Allan Grant? Kendrick: I did all I could because in May of 1968 I became a member of the State Board of Agriculture, and served in that capacity for about sixteen years. So I had more than a casual relationship with Allan. Over the course of our relationship, we became close friends, and I think he was a strong supporter of what I was trying to do. And it gave me an opportunity to try and help him think through what a university really stood for. Well, I don't think I completely sold him on the notion that we were not going downhill and that we were applying sanctions to the offenders. But Roger was applying as many sanctions as he could get away with. He was a tougher administrator than people have given him credit for. President Hayakawa of San Francisco State University was getting all the publicity for yanking off the loudspeaker when someone was advocating some position of protest. That's the main thing he ever did, but that was a dramatic event with lots of media coverage. Roger was developing all kinds of rules, regulations, policies, and sanctions, and making them stick. So he did ten times what Hayakawa did to try to bring order back to the campus. But it was tough for the Regents to see because every time he moved one step ahead, it seems like he got pushed two steps backwards. 207 The Jerry Brown-David Saxon Era Warfare between the Governor and the Regents Kendrick: Then came Jerry Brown, and there was kind of a sigh of relief because we expected him to be supportive. Charlie Hitch felt that eight years of Reagan was about all he could stand as the chief administrator of the University of California, and he was not looking forward to going through all this with another governor. At the end of Charlie's presidency, the University did not have good relationships in Sacramento. Lage: In the Brown administration? Kendrick: No. At the end of the Reagan administration. Even though the budgets didn't suffer a lot, there was in the state government still a lot of residual suspicion and resentment, I think, of the University of California. Particularly in the legislature. Bear in mind [Assemblyman] John Vasconcellos as a constant in all of this. Lage: Yes, but he would have been a particular burr in the side of agriculture programs, or was it of the entire University? Kendrick: Yes. He got his burr in the agricultural program over with early. [laughter] I had my bruises, but I think we got to the point with John where he recognized that we were on different wavelengths, and I think we respected our differences. I didn't convince him, and he certainly didn't convince me. In those early years, he tended to be vindictive, I thought. That's my judgment. He kind of had it in for us, in the sense that he felt that agribusiness had profited long enough. They developed machines; they were not sensitive to environmental quality or to the farm workers. But John's fundamental interest is educational quality, and he's been riding that hobbyhorse ever since. So as far as targeting agriculture for criticism, I think that's passed. If a particular abusive action happened to take place, he would be quick to restore his anger and concern, but I think that's not likely to happen. Along came Jerry Brown as governor, and somewhat of a sigh of relief went through the University. They felt that here was one of our alumni as governor, a person of clear intellectual stature who was capable of understanding the intricacies of the University. We thought he understood what a university was all about. We felt that at last we have somebody now whom we can talk with. 208 Kendrick: We were quickly disillusioned. And of course, the Jerry Brown era was the Saxon era. Lage : So Saxon came in as President of the University just about the same time? Kendrick: Just about the same time. David took it upon himself to try and repair some of the ill feeling that existed between Sacramento and the University and tried to work as best he could with the governor. What started us on this interpretation today was the budgetary process. We got down to a pretty standard way of putting the budget together, as far as the Reagan administration was concerned, and in due course the budget really didn't suffer a lot, even though he had this feeling of unhappiness with the way we were doing things. But after those early years of cuts, Reagan's unhappiness didn't come out in any harmful way as far as the budget was concerned. Faculty salaries suffered; they were not very sympathetic there. But we didn't know what we were in for. Governor Jerry Brown surprised a lot of us because he then let his arrogance and cynicism show. The first adverse session, and one that was crucial as far as I was concerned, was a meeting that the Regents held in the Lawrence Hall of Science. It wasn't a very good environment for a Regents' meeting, but it was held up there on the hill. It was a meeting at which Chet McCorkle, who was then the senior vice president, was to present to the Regents the result of a two or three-year effort to develop a master academic plan for the institution. It consisted of a collection of nine to twelve individual academic plans and an overall master plan. My group had contributed to this, by writing an overview of where agriculture was going. The entire document must have weighed twenty-five or thirty pounds. It was nine to twelve documents, and when they stacked them up on top of one another the stack was at least a foot high or higher. Chet had them with him at the Regents' meeting, and he was really quite proud of the fact that they had finally worked this academic plan through the system. There was everything in it from A to Zilch and back again. The governor took the microphone, and said he was totally unimpressed. What the University was trying to do was what he called the squid process, and the squid process, he said, was to obscure things with ink. [laughter] Lage: That's not too funny, after you've developed the plan. Kendrick: So it was kind of a personal defeat for Chet, and a bit of a slap in the face as far as what had become a standard format for doing business. The mistake, if any mistake was made, was to take a big document that was a foot high and composed of nine to twelve 209 Kendrick: sections, and plunk them down on the table at the meeting of the Board of Regents. I can assure you nobody — nobody — just absolutely nobody is going to read that much material. What was really needed was a concise, executive summary, with an explanation that if any Regent really was all that interested in the details, we would make arrangements for that Regent to see the detailed document. But anyway, that wasn't done. Well, that kind of summarized the warfare that the governor had with the Regents and the University. He was totally unsympathetic with the Reagan-appointed Regents. He interpreted Regents' meetings as nothing more than a corporate board of directors' business meeting, which involved talking almost exclusively about financial management and spent scant time on intellectual and educational policy matters. He felt that the established Regents were all mechanistic and representatives of big business, agribusiness, and traditional institutional structures. Lage : Did he express all this? Kendrick: In a way, he would. Not the way I've described it. He was very candid and blunt in his criticism of the Regents, in telling them that they spent far too much time on the appearance of buildings. What did that matter? The fundamental issue that a board such as this ought to be talking about was educational philosophy. And he set about appointing some members to the board who represented really non- traditional points of view, so that the character of the Board of Regents changed materially with appointees not necessarily sympathetic towards the kinds of programs that I was administering. They didn't understand them necessarily, but they held the point of view that agriculture had been favored for seventy-five or a hundred years, and it was about time to reallocate some of that favoritism to other bypassed segments of society. Jerry Brown's idea of a good Regents' meeting would be one that would spend an hour discussing educational philosophy or the deficiencies that undergraduate education was providing its students. His criticism wasn't all wrong, but the manner in which he addressed them was not complimentary to his colleagues. He didn't give them much credit for the fact that they were interested in managing effectively a multibillion dollar corporation. While [Regent] Ed [ward W.] Carter was always polite, and Jerry Brown was always polite in his dealing with Ed Carter, they certainly didn't come to life with the same point of view. The interesting thing is that Jerry Brown reappointed Ed Carter to an unexpired term, to extend his tenure on the board longer than almost anybody else who had served. So he was not alienated by Ed Carter, but he certainly was by Regents Bill 210 Kendrick: Wilson, or William French Smith, or Verne Orr. and some of the other Reagan appointees. He was always on the opposite side of issues with Regents Dean Watkins and Glenn Campbell. So there were a lot of opportunities for conf rontationism between Jerry Brown and the Regents. And Jerry wound up attending more meetings than Reagan did. He would usually bring an agenda item that he was interested in pursuing. I'll have to review some of the names of the Regents that he appointed. Lage: One was Gregory Bateson. Kendrick: Gregory Bateson, Margaret Mead's former husband. He was an appointee by Brown who almost belied rationality. Gregory Bateson would take off on a discussion of something that absolutely nobody in the room could understand. He would launch on a discussion for fifteen or twenty minutes, and there wasn't anybody who would have a rejoinder or anything to say because it was so abstract. [laughs] It bore no relationship to reality. What he was really talking about was some sort of intellectual pursuit that was associated with a University exercise, or could appropriately be incorporated into a University environment. But it certainly was beyond most of the board to grapple with because he was not able to put it in to a contemporary situation. But Jerry Brown could engage in that kind of discussion. The more we dealt with him, the more we saw that his concept of what Regents ought to be was a collection of people capable of engaging in seminars and philosophical discussions of the role of the University in contemporary society. During both of his terms as governor, he continued to express this point of view, although it certainly became considerably less anti-business as he became reconciled to the fact that healthy economic growth in the state of California was vital to the welfare and activities of the state, and so he became a bit less critical of that kind of representation on the Board of Regents. We had some budget problems with him. Brown and the Budget Lage: Now, how did that attitude get translated in your confrontations or cooperation with the Department of Finance? Kendrick: Well, the Department of Finance, as far as Brown was concerned — I'm trying to think of who his directors were. We continued to work with kind of the traditional civil servants who come along with the Department of Finance. Roy M. Bell was Department of Finance director, and at one point, Mary Ann Graves was director. 211 Kendrick: Saxon's relationship with Brown ultimately deteriorated. David really didn't have a lot of tolerance for the kind of intellectualism that Brown wanted to talk about, when David was really suffering because faculty salaries were not being adequately increased and money to run the place was tough to come by. Renewing the contracts to manage the weapons laboratories was coming up, and Brown wasn't very helpful — wasn't helpful at all — in trying to sustain those kinds of contracts. There were a lot of bread-and-butter issues as far as the University was concerned that the Regents had to contend with, but Jerry seemed to be saying, "So what? The place will handle itself." While he was correct in the fact that the Regents needed to be concerned about educational policy and the quality of undergraduate education, and the issues of admission policies, and demographic changes, and affirmative action, he ignored the primary need of providing an adequate budget to support all of the activities of the University. He tended to dismiss, we felt too easily, the kind of bread-and-butter issues that had some relationship to dollars and cents, and physical facilities maintenance and construction. It was during this period that Jerry conceived of the nutty idea of giving everybody a sixty dollar per month raise, or something like that. So a full professor got a sixty dollar raise, and a custodian got a sixty dollar raise, and the percentage there upset the whole salary system, particularly because we operate the salary augmentation system on the percentage basis. It took years to recover from that kind of action — but his explanation was, well, the lower-paid people need the money more than the higher-paid people, and sixty dollars means a lot to them and doesn't mean a lot to those other people. Sixty dollars sticks in my memory somewhere, but I don't know if that was what it was or not. But it characterized his cynicism about the University. I think his Jesuit training influenced his spartanism. In his commentary about salaries of administrators, he was totally unsympathetic towards the allocation of sufficient remunerative salary as far as the administration was concerned. He would not recognize that you're in a competitive society with managers, with external private enterprise as well as in other higher education institutions. You can't just get anybody to be a president or a vice president, you have to have people who are qualified and experienced in those areas, and you set your salaries on the basis of what other top quality institutions are paying for positions with similar kinds of responsibility. So the competition was not necessarily with the manager of a bridge district or something, it's with a manager with comparable responsibility in a comparable institution. 212 Kendrick: He would counter that argument by saying. "Well, there's a certain value to psychic income," that not many people are favored with the opportunity to serve in a capacity that makes a difference. And therefore, as compensation in lieu of money, you ought to be satisfied with the fact that there's a lot of psychic income associated with being in these responsible positions. Well, psychic income doesn't buy food for the kids, or put them through school or what have you. So, there was not a lot of good feeling in the course of the two terms of Governor Jerry Brown. Extension's Budget Cuts Restored by the University Kendrick: As far as agriculture was concerned, I had some problems. I think we had another cut that wasn't particularly aimed at agriculture, but it was a University-wide reduction. In this instance, I was able to prevail and suggest that we were gcir.g to take our fair share. During one of these reductions that the University was going to take — and I think it was related to that early favored position; even though the people involved were different, the memory lingers on — Cooperative Extension was targeted for about an 8 percent cut. The University had been assigned something on the order of about a 6 percent or 5 percent cut. Lage : That was by the governor for the University budget? Kendrick: That was in the governor's budget. It was not a vindictive cut, it was just a shortfall in revenues, and all state agencies were having to dig deeply in their pockets. There was one action promoted by Governor Brown which did not give the faculty any salary relief, no range adjustments. That was applied somewhat to punish the faculty and their "arrogance." And we ate it. But this was a revenue shortfall action, and I don't recall particularly what year it was. But Saxon and the budget office people decided that Cooperative Extension was low in priority, below some of the other areas that they wanted to fund. So they decided to assign a greater percentage cut to extension than they did the total University's budget. Now, that didn't set very well with the agricultural interests, and I had somewhat of a problem to contain that unhappiness internally, in extension. I really didn't want to be associated with bringing about a strong politi cal action in the legislature to counter the President's action. Lage: Because extension had the local connections to gather the political forces in the counties? 213 Kendrick: That's true. You can play that political maneuvering once in & while, but you really ought to play it when it really counts. And since it wasn't going to amount to a lot of dollars and cents, we were sort of waiting and seeing. We were not silent about it, but to my knowledge we took no active efforts to stir up the crowd about that differential. I advised the President against his plan when he suggested to me that he was going to cut the extension budget like this. I said, "You are the author of how you are going to allocate your funds, but I would caution you against it because that particular unit has a strong political base. It could be somewhat embarrassing to you in due course." I* David listened attentively to my comments, and he said, well, he'd think about it. But he finally proposed to take this reduction differentially. I'd also indicated to the President that what he was advocating was a perfectly legitimate budgeting technique, that I would agree that cutting some programs more than others made good sense because if you're taking a budget reduction and you just nip everybody, you have some programs which can't handle a little reduction, and these suffer excessively while the larger units could probably absorb them in due course without having a major program problem. But that nevertheless, his suggesting that Cooperative Extension take the larger share of this cut was going to cause some problems politically. And sure enough, it did. As I said, we weren't silent about what effects the cut would have because we have a constituency who read the papers and know that we have to deal with budget reductions. There's also an agricultural lobby in Sacramento that follows very diligently all agricultural actions, and we had the University's Governmental Relations Office in Sacramento, and they followed constantly issues that affect us, particularly the budget. So it was no secret that this was going to happen. What really was at stake here was that the overall reduction, money reduction, was for the University, and we were told, "You can take it where you want to." But then the legislature wanted to know where we were going to take the cut, because if we were to take it out of the affirmative action, that exercises a number of the people. If we were to take it out of another program, that exercises another group of people. If you take it out of agriculture, that exercises another group of people. So when it came time to appear before the Senate Finance Subcommittee one morning, public service funds, of which Cooperative Extension is the major share of that particular budget item, was the topic of the review. Senator [Kenneth L.] 214 Kendrick: Maddy from Fresno and Senator [Walter W.] Stiern from Kern County, and Senator [Nicholas C.] Petris from Oakland were the three members of the subcommittee. The main testifier from the University was Bill Frazer, who was the academic vice president. This was in the latter part of the Saxon era. We came to this topic, and Senator Maddy said, "What about this allocation of 8 percent reduction to Cooperative Extension?" I was in the witness chair, and I said. "Senator, this was not my recommendation. I think you ought to listen to another representative who has overall responsibility for the academic program of the institution. And since this was counter to my recommendation. I think you should listen to his justification for it." Bill took the chair, and he did about as well as he could, explaining that good budgetary practices dictated the fact that you make differential allocations of cuts rather than nip around the edges. He made good logical sense. I'll condense a good deal of conversation into one sentence: The senator ultimately said, "Well, you may have the logic on your side, but I've got the votes on mine." [laughter] "I suggest you restore that cut so that it's equalized with the rest of the institution," and that's the way it worked out. We didn't have any organized campaign, but it left a lot of ill feelings in the institution. The Budget as a Political Document Kendrick: It left a lot of ill feelings within Cooperative Extension against the president. He really didn't need to do that. The amount of dollars they were going to achieve in that area were minimal, in my judgment, and the political price that he paid was somewhat of an embarrassment, to be told that you may have your priorities, but I've got mine. And mine are going to prevail because I'm voting on your budget. This kind of reinforced within Cooperative Extension and its leadership a feeling that the president really didn't care about Cooperative Extension, that it was being punished for all the personnel troubles arising out of Cooperative Extension, relative to affirmative action and alleged discrimination in handling personnel problems by its management. And it reinforced the suspicion — without any good justified explanation that the President was taking it out on Cooperative Extension — without really caring whether personnel deficiencies in management were there or not. Lage : Did you fee1, that it was a punishment for this type of thing too, or just purely a budgetary decision? 215 Kendrick: I don't think it was a punishment reaction by Saxon. I don't think that he felt that it was as important as faculty salaries, or as important as some of the more critical campus-based programs, and therefore it was lower in the priority of things to be concerned about. And therefore it could stand a higher reduction in its base budget than something more important, in his point of view. But the thing that David overlooked, and was never in my judgment completely in tune with, were the political forces at work in the state. The budget is a political document, and it's no accident that when David Gardner became president, he combined the budget responsibilities with the University Relations Office. Because he said, "Once that budget is put together, you get it funded by the political process, and not by any logic." I quickly learned in my vice presidency that logic is the lifeblood of the academic decision-making process, but once you leave that environment, you've got to be pretty doggone political. And if you want your viewpoint to prevail, you have to convince people who are not trained like you, who have voting responsibilities and public representation responsibilities, that what you have to say is important. They want to know how many people out there also think it is important. To illustrate the political process at work in one of my requests, I'll tell you exactly how the IPM [Integrated Pest Management] program was funded in a very interesting way. It took place in about a minute, minute-and-a-half, conversation with the state director of food and agriculture, Rich Rominger, Jim Kendrick and Governor Jerry Brown, at a meeting in San Diego where Jerry Brown was the principal speaker. Rich and I went up to the speaker's table just to say hello and get this last word in, because he was about ready to sign off on his budget. He asked Rich if this was an important program to him, and Rich said, "Absolutely. Without this program, we won't be able to regulate these pesticides." The governor replied, "Okay." Lage : Had you done some work with Rich before? Kendrick: Absolutely, we'd done much work with Rich and many others! [laughter] Lage: Well, let's talk about that in more detail next time. Kendrick: We can do that. But what I'm saying is that despite the fact that the University was having all kinds of problems with Governor Jerry Brown and his approach to budgeting, I again felt that we did reasonably well in agriculture — except for the fact that when the institution suffers, agriculture suffers also because our faculty package is the same as everybody else's. When salaries aren't increased or kept pace with competitive 216 Kendrick: institutions, then our budget also suffers because that large amount of money that comes to support people's activities is a part of that overall budget. And then it gets segregated every year from the University's total budget, so it shows that the Agricultural Experiment Station has had a budget increase, if faculty and staff salaries have been increased. But usually it was a salary range adjustment and an indexed increase for cost of living resulting in more dollars than we had the previous year. But it didn't result in one dime for a new program. During most of the latter part of the Reagan administration, and after Dick Lyng went to Washington, D.C.. Jerry Fielder was made director the Department of Food and Agriculture. He lost his life in an airplane accident. Following this tragic event, a member of the Board of Food and Agriculture, and a colleague of mine, Bru [C. Brunei] Christensen, became the director of Food and Agriculture. Bru was a strong advocate for agriculture and appreciated the University's role in serving California's agriculture. So I felt that if I really needed political support in dealing with the legislature or with the executive branch, I had a receptive opportunity to do so. The legislature itself was where I was experiencing a lot of problems, but they were largely philosophical problems; they didn't result in budgetary adj ustments. Brown's Major Agricultural Appointments: Rich Rominger Tim Wallace, Rose Bird, Kendrick: During the Jerry Brown administration, I started with Rose Bird as the secretary of the Agriculture and Services Agency, and Tim Wallace, who was on our staff when he accepted an appointment as director of the Department of Food and Agriculture. Tim was an extension economist, who went on leave from the University to accept the appointment as director. The established agricultural units of the state ultimately became disenchanted with Tim. Probably what caused the disenchantment more than anything was his strong advocacy for consumer representation on marketing boards. There is a state statute which the Department of Food and Agriculture administers that authorizes the establishment of commodity marketing order boards. Marketing order boards are producer-dominated boards which, through a process of membership approval, tax themselves for promotional sales activities and in many instances support research programs. It's somewhat complicated to form a marketing order board. For approval to establish a marketing order board for a specific commodity, a specified percentage of the acreage's ownership must vote favorably on its formation. The list of who 217 Kendrick: is eligible to vote is assembled by the Department of Food and Agriculture. But once it's approved, then all members of the commodity-producing group belong and must tax themselves on some production unit basis and contribute to the marketing order fund for that commodity. The fund is then allocated to activities on the basis of recommendations from the board composed of the grower members of the commodity marketing order. Well, the authorizing statute also states that the consumer shall be represented on the marketing order boards. Up until this time the consumer was never really represented because agriculture just didn't want to be bothered with "outsiders" commenting on how boards should administer these funds equally since the origin of the funds came from the growers themselves and was not composed of the general tax fund. The prevailing attitude was, "It's our money, we ought to be able to allocate it the way we want to." Tim wanted to interpret the law more strictly than his predecessors and get consumers represented on the boards — there must have been thirty or forty active boards. He began placing consumers on the boards, and that angered the traditional members. They generally responded with dismay and asked, "Why are you doing this? It's our money." Tim countered with a legal interpretation from the attorney general's office that it was not their money because once the boards use the policing power of the state to tax individuals, that money becomes public money. It's not solely growers' money anymore; it becomes public funds administered by public agencies of government. Well, you can imagine that that just didn't swallow very well as far as organized agriculture was concerned. Some boards voted to disband: the Wine Institute, for instance, wasn't going to put up with any of that stuff, so they just disbanded their marketing board. There were some others that were equally unhappy. Ultimately because of this and a number of other actions, Tim was persuaded that he had lost the confidence of organized agriculture, and he'd be happier returning to the University. Which he did. I've simplified a more complex problem including Tim's relationship with Secretary Bird, which led to his resignation as director, but the marketing order issue was a major factor in agriculture's disenchantment with him as the director. Rose Bird spent a good deal of her early activities getting the Agricultural Labor Relations Act designed and enacted. It was a time of uneasy truce with agriculture. Lionel Steinberg, I think, was the president of the State Board of Food and Agriculture, and by this time that ex officio spot on the Board of Regents was gone. Lionel was from Indio, in the Coachella Valley. He was a good Democrat and had previously served on the 218 Kendrick: Board of Agriculture. He also was a nontraditional agriculturalist as far as his farming colleagues were concerned because he had a certain amount of sympathy towards organized labor. He tried to make it work and tried to be sympathetic toward it. So he had one of the earliest contracts with the United Farm Workers. Cesar Chavez's union. Lage: He was appointed by Brown, you said? Kendrick: Yes. Jerry Brown. The president of the State Board of Food and Agriculture is appointed annually. They are often reappointed. but it's not a multi-year term like the other members of the board. There were also other members of the Board of Food and Agriculture who saw that farm labor unrest was a losing proposition. It was something that everybody wished would cease and desist. So when the Agricultural Labor Relations Act was working its way through the legislature, agriculture, on the basis of the governor's promise that this Agricultural Labor Relations Board would bring peace to the fields and mediate the differences, backed off and in a sense said, "Well, we won't oppose it." So it was enacted. And then Governor Brown proceeded to appoint four strong advocates for the United Farm Workers to a five-member board. Agriculture felt that the governor had really done them in, sold them down the river. And they had absolutely no sympathy for Jerry Brown from then on in. They ceased to trust him to do a thing on their behalf. I believe most farmers attribute that lack of trust to that one act. Rose Bird was also tarred with that same brush. They, the farmers, felt betrayed. Lage: Did they feel that she had a role in the appointments, or that she had misled them in promising something from the board that didn' t occur? Kendrick: Well, I think both. They knew that she was Jerry's principal agricultural advisor, and when several union sympathizers were appointed members of the Agricultural Labor Relations Board, and the executive secretary, who had a lot of influence, came right out of organized labor's units, they had strong evidence of that betrayal. And then in order to assemble the work force to get the Labor Relations Act implemented, they recruited staff from among organized labor people. So as far as agriculture was concerned, what they found themselves saddled with was a state- supported labor organization, an advocacy group, not an independent arbitration unit that would listen to both sides of an issue and make a judicial judgment. 219 Kendrick: So that was not only tough to handle, but it placed agriculture pretty much at war with the Brown administration. The Department of Food and Agriculture's successor to Tim Wallace was Rich Rominger, who was also at that time a member of the Board of Food and Agriculture, a farmer from Winters who was a longtime personal friend of mine. We had a close and supportive relationship. So during all of the hullaballoo that existed as far as organized agriculture and the governor was concerned, I had a way to get to the governor and his staff, through Rich, who although not an assertive director, at least had the confidence of the governor, and the governor listened to him for agricultural advice. Lage : Did he have a nontraditional approach in terms of agriculture? Kendrick: Sort of. But he's a hardworking farmer near Winters, and he has to make ends meet. Rich's value in that role was that he was willing to listen to criticism, willing to acknowledge some past practices, such as pesticide usage, as being detrimental to the environment, and recognizing that consumerism and environmental quality advocates groups had a role to play in the agricultural society. He was a Davis graduate and a good student. I think he really was the only person who could fill the role of trying to deal with the extreme positions advocated by the governor, or even Rose Bird. I thought I had a cordial working relationship with Rose Bird, but I didn't have to work with her very closely. Lage: She wasn't in too terribly long, was she? Kendrick: No. Not more than a couple of years because when the chief justice of the state Supreme Court position became vacant. Jerry appointed her to that position. Another political maneuver took place at this time, because when Rich was first made director of the Department of Food and Agriculture, the representative of agriculture on the cabinet was Rose Bird, the secretary for agriculture and services. It was tough for agriculture. Earl Coke, under Governor Reagan, was the one that created the secretary's position in the first place, and the agriculture department had won the day by having a secretary of agriculture and services with cabinet representation. Earl was a very close confidant of the governor. But when the secretary was Rose Bird, the agricultural community didn't feel represented. Lage: She was the first one who didn't come out of agriculture, wasn't she? 220 Kendrick: Yes, but the creation of the secretary of agriculture and services was done by Governor Reagan. Prior to that time, the director — the Department of Food and Agriculture had a cabinet position. Then Governor Reagan made the super-agencies and incorporated administratively more functions than just a single department in those secretaryships. That's when the department's administrator became subcabinet level. A group of agricultural interests of the state, and I was included, met several times with the governor, and ultimately prevailed upon him to recognize the importance of agriculture and its representation as a cabinet member. In due course the director of the Department of Food and Agriculture was made a cabinet officer. So Rich became a cabinet officer, which was an important move. Even in a fairly hostile state government as far as agriculture was concerned, when the governor was persuaded to pay a little more attention to agriculture, Rich was the ideal person to push the governor in subtle ways into positions that were somewhat favorable to agriculture. Rich didn't enjoy the undying, or uncompromising, support of all traditional agriculture because they felt he was a little too sympathetic in dealing with labor and a little too sympathetic towards consumers "messing around" in agricultural matters — the same kind of move that I was making in the University. The reason Rich and I worked so well together. I think, is that we had the same motivation and goals, and we both had to deal with fairly traditional departments. So we had to make some changes. Lage: Interesting correlation. Kendrick: I felt that we had a very good relationship, and Rich stayed with that role until Jerry Brown did not run for a third term. The Deukmej ian-Gardner Years: Stature and Its Budget Restoring the University's Kendrick: Now, we've gotten to the third change in the governorship during my tenure. That occurred with Deukmej ian's election. Governor Deukmej ian's relationship with the University, as all the evidence shows, has been tremendously favorable. Kendrick: Therein begins another regime as far as the University administration is concerned; that's when Dave Gardner became president of the University. 221 Lage: Is that by design that these presidential changes take place at the same time the governor changes? Kendrick: No. Lage: Just has happened the last couple of times? Kendrick: That's been a coincidence. I think governors [laughing] have worn out our presidents, as much as internal activities are concerned. I don't think David Saxon really wanted to put up with another governor. He had served eight years with Jerry Brown as governor and that took its toll from David's energy, I'm certain. Lage: So it's starting over again, with a new governor. Kendrick: I think if he'd realized the support that was going to come from the governor's chair in Sacramento, he might have looked at it in a different light. But I think David Saxon was tired, worn out. You get worn out. These jobs are just as abrasive as they can be. There's a lot of glamour associated with being the president of the University of California, but they have tough assignments. You have people gnawing at you all the time. The moments of glory are few and far between, and the rest of the time is spent trying to keep the place together and trying to drain the swamp filled with alligators. It's not all that it appears to be. In my judgment, they earn every cent that they pay them because they're short-lived positions. They're not the traditional presidencies that used to be associated with a university or college, where you spend your career as a president, enjoying all the nice things that happen to you, where you're revered by the total constituency of the institution. That's not the case anymore. It's a rat race to stay ahead of the critics. So, the Deukmej ian-Gardner era came, and David Gardner was able to convince the governor that one of the things that he could be long remembered for would be to restore the University to its once-high stature, recognizing the fact that it was unique and it had a quality faculty which was in danger of being destroyed by not compensating it in relationship to its leading competitive institutions. President Gardner convinced the governor that he could do much to restore that quality by preventing the drain of people going away to other places because they received more attractive job offers. And that happened; in the course of about two years' time, there was about a thirty- five percent increase in faculty salaries, and we're now slightly ahead of the average for our competitive eight institutions. In my judgment, it was all attributed to the relationship that David Gardner and Governor Deukmej ian have developed. 222 Lage: Do you have some knowledge about whether it's particularly Gardner's approach that won Deukmej ian over, or do you think that Deukmej ian had these sympathies? Kendrick: No, I think Deukmej ian, more than the two previous governors, understands the importance of education. In spite of his running battle with [State Superintendent of Schools William] Konig over the funding of community college and K-12 programs, I think the governor really does understand quality education. I think that if he could be convinced that the money going into education is money well spent and not sort of frittered away in programs that are not really directed towards education, he would be willing to give these schools what they need. He recognizes that Honig's on the other end of the political spectrum from him. So part of their difference is a political difference; it's not just an educational philosophy difference. But with David Gardner and Governor Deukmej ian, I think both showed up at the concert with the same sheet music and started singing all of it together. They're true believers. I don't think David had to spend a lot of time convincing him that the University had been disadvantaged through the Brown administration, and the most important thing that the governor could do would be to restore the stature of the institution. There was a lot of hard evidence that we were getting second and third choices in our recruitment efforts, and we were losing some significant faculty members from the campuses because they were being attracted to higher salaries and greater opportunities elsewhere. If this had been allowed to continue, it would be many, many years before we could restore that kind of quality in our institution. I don't think the governor took a lot of convincing that that was indeed true, and that he could gain positive points by being identified with being sympathetic towards a quality higher education support in the state. Of course, Gardner is a very persuasive person in his own rights. He doesn't advocate something without his homework being very well done; he's articulate, and you'd have a hard time debating an issue and winning against him. You can make points, but he's going to x.ake counterpoints. I think he's developed this relationship with the governor in a very admirable manner. Just as when I was trying to get funding for some of these special programs such as IPM, I wouldn't say, "You've got to do it," and I don't think Gardner said, "You've got to do it." He put it in the frame of giving the governor a choice. "You don't have to do it, but if you don't, this is going to happen. If you don't, we'll just continue to gradually deteriorate, little by little. You won't notice any dramatic event, but in due course it will show." Bear in mind that David arrived here having spent 223 Kendrick: a year as chairman of that national study that published with great fanfare the document A Nation ^t Risk, which pointed out the deficiencies of public education as it presently existed in this country. The report said that if a foreign country had tried to weaken this country, they could do no better than destroy our educational system by dropping the quality. That was a fairly powerful document, pointing out the importance of education and the lack of competitiveness. So he had the credentials to point out to the governor, and anybody else who would listen, that we're just a part of that total system. By neglect and lack of funding, the whole system was going to be at risk. He had a powerful argument that something had to be done, and it had to be done quickly. He pointed out also that it didn't have to be done all at once. David proposed another little bit of subtlety, that you could adopt a program of improvement phased over several years if the deficiencies are too great to overcome in a single year. He said let's have a goal over a two- or three-year period, something that is fundable. So, as the University and the faculty's salaries got better, a lot of the internal unhappiness dropped. Of course Cooperative Extension's salaries were linked to the funding adjustments also. Another thing that David Gardner recognized, and I never had to spend a lot of time persuading him not to do, was separating out the faculty salaries from all academic salaries. David Saxon always wanted to increase just the faculty, recognizing that they were the backbone of the institution, I never argued with the fact that they were the backbone of the institution, but there were certainly a lot of other political aspects to increasing faculty salaries alone. When you were talking about academics, I had 550 hard-working academics in Cooperative Extension, and if they had been so differentially treated in any academic salary adjustment, and they had been organized, they would probably have gone on strike. But as long as the definition of faculty meant all academic salaries, we could make a case for treating academics in some fashion a little differently from the non-academics, for the staff support. But you want to be careful about how you treat them, too. They are an important part of the institution, and they're part of what makes things function smoothly. David Gardner understands that. He didn't take a lot of convincing. So my relationship with David and his support were superb. I felt I retired with more support and understanding than I had in any of the three regimes. That was not to say that I didn't have good support and understanding in the other two, but it was a little easier to convince David of the importance of the division's programs, and the role they played in the vitality of the total institution. 224 Kendrick: I did not develop the same kind of relationship with the Department of Food and Agriculture in the Deukmej ian regime that I had with Rich Rominger and with Bru Christensen, and Jerry Fielder, and Dick Lyng. The director of food and agriculture was Clare Berry hill, dare was a former senator and a farmer. He was a pretty politically-driven person. I was not reappointed to serve on the State Board of Food and Agriculture when my term expired in 1985. So my relationship with the department was a little more distant than before. I had turned over a good deal of the responsibilities of direct relationship with segments of the department to Director [of the Experiment Station] Lowell Lewis. So he maintained a closer relationship with them than I did. But the University's relationship overall with that particular regime in the Department of Food and Agriculture tended to drift a little bit. Lage: Lack of sympathy on Berryhill's part? Kendrick: No. I think it was a lack of understanding of the role of the University in agricultural research and extension. I don't think his primary interests were in improving that relationship. In one of the early sessions I had with him, I had to try and play down one of the blasts that he had received from a member of the faculty of the University who had accused him of something that was not very complimentary. So we didn't start off on a very good foot. He wanted to know why I would allow that sort of expression to come forth from the University. He felt unjustly accused of something, I don't even remember the subject. It was not a very politic thing to do on the part of one of my colleagues, but it was nevertheless nothing that I could control or that I would attempt to do so. Berryhill was also somewhat unsympathetic with the makeup of the Board of Food and Agriculture. He didn't express it as such, but you could tell that philosophically and politically it was composed of more critics of traditional agriculturalism, a characteristic of the kind of people Jerry Brown had appointed to the board. He was out to make changes on the board and to have people who were much more sympathetic toward traditional agriculture. Richard Peters was appointed president of the Board of Food and Agriculture. Richard was an agriculturalist from Fresno, a longtime supporter of the governor, both financially and morally. He is an Armenian and a political confidante of the governor. I had a reasonably good relationships with Richard. But my own need to work as closely with the department as I had in previous administrations was not as great, as I indicated, because the director of the Agricultural Experiment Station was engaged in 225 Kendrick: more of the operational relationships. Cooperative Extension had kind of an oblique relationship with the department, wherever they were engaged in similar activities of an educational nature. As far as the budgetary support was concerned, we had some interesting developments with the governor, and that's one of the topics of funding that we'll come to when we talk about special projects that the experiment station undertook. Lage: So that's what we'll turn to next time. 226 XII SPECIAL RESEARCH UNITS WITHIN THE AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION Giannini Foundation for Research in Agricultural Economics The Original Grant and Organization [Date of Interview: October 22. 1987] ## Lage: Today is October 22, 1987; this is our ninth session with James Kendrick. We're going to talk about the Agricultural Experiment Station and some of the special programs you began to introduce flexibility into the research program. Kendrick: The experiment station in 1968, under Director Clarence Kelly, was certainly not performing unimportant research, but it was having some trouble managing its meager resources in order to meet all the defined problems of commercial agriculture. The most vocal concern expressed by the clients, so to speak, the commercial agricultural interests, was that we were not paying enough attention to marketing and economic problems. That was laid at the feet of the Giannini Foundation's not performing in a manner that the commercial agricultural interests of the state had been accustomed to, in dealing with the Giannini Foundation. And that was due in large part to the personnel of the Giannini Foundation. Let me describe the Giannini Foundation because that's one of the units we were going to discuss today. Lage: Was that a unit within the — ? Kendrick: That's a unit within the experiment station. It has a long history because it goes back to an original grant from A. P. Giannini, when he was president of the Bank of Italy, which was the predecessor of the Bank of America. He gave the University $1.5 million, from which they built Giannini Hall on the 227 Kendrick: Berkeley campus and had a residue left over, for which there was a trust statement as to how that could be used. It was to support agricultural research, aimed at improving the economic status of a whole array of things. The charge would almost include anything you wanted to do in the Agricultural Experiment Station, but it became predominantly an economics research institute. The unique thing that the Giannini Foundation did in its operation was to have fellows appointed in the Giannini Foundation as a distinct appointment, in addition to an experiment station appointment or a professorial appointment. Lage : You mean one person would hold the three titles. Kendrick: One person could be listed as a fellow in the Giannini Foundation, as well as, say, an agricultural economist in the experiment station. In those days they started as a junior agricultural economist, and went to an assistant agricultural economist, next an associate agricultural economist, and then just agricultural economist. That was the series within the experiment station, and then of course the parallel faculty series was instructor, then an assistant professor, an associate professor, and full professor. Each one of those steps were ranks, and they constituted a promotion, from one rank to another. A fellow in the Giannini Foundation did not have any rank, in those steps. You were just given the courtesy title as fellow in the Giannini Foundation. The only qualification for being a fellow in the Giannini Foundation was being appointed as a regular faculty member in the Department of Agricultural Economics. Originally, the only Department of Agricultural Economics was on the Berkeley campus, so the Giannini Foundation was centered, in its early years, on the Berkeley campus. The director was also the chairman of the department at Berkeley. In its early years, it addressed specifically economic problems and market evaluations for particular commodities of California's agricultural crops. It was highly regarded by commercial agriculture as an organization within the University that was really helping a lot in marketing the commodities successfully. Some of the individuals who helped guide the Giannini Foundation were Claude Hutchison, Harry Wellman, George Mehren, Ray [Raymond] Bressler, David Clarke [Jr.], and Loy Sammet — I'm not sure Loy was ever director of the Giannini Foundation. But in any event, those were the people who paid a lot of attention to the agriculture's economic stresses and strains. 228 Kendrick: Well, as I indicated, the only requirement for being a fellow of the Giannini Foundation was being appointed to the faculty of the departments of agricultural economics at Davis or Berkeley. And associate fellows were those who were agricultural economists in forestry, at Berkeley, or economists in the soils and environmental sciences at Riverside, and all of the agricultural economists in Cooperative Extension. To help the director in the governance of the foundation there was what was called an executive committee composed of representatives from Davis, Berkeley, and Cooperative Extension. The foundation also supported a rather comprehensive graduate library. Over time, it has developed into one of the most complete libraries of agricultural economics that I'm aware of — so it has a good reputation. Lage: Did the fellows get an extra stipend? Kendrick: No. It's a courtesy title. All of the University's agricultural economists published under the logo of the Giannini Foundation, and so the Giannini Foundation for Agricultural Economics has a reputation far exceeding the amount of money that goes into supporting the program. Most of what was left from the original 1.5 million-dollar grant after building Giannini Hall, which has been increased by its investment value, essentially supports the Giannini Library. There was a small amount to support the administration of the foundation — the director's stipend, a few graduate fellowships, and a few dollars for specific research programs. The truth is that the main support for agricultural economic research was the regular University funding, plus grant funds that these individuals obtained from other sources. But since nearly all the research was published with the acknowledgement of the Giannini Foundation, it's easy to see why the reputation of the Giannini Foundation was really gained by the total activity of all the University's agricultural economists pursuing their regular research programs within the University of California. So it had a reputation far beyond its financial resources. It was always a problem for me to respond to the nostalgic memories of people who said, "The Giannini Foundation is no longer addressing the needs of agriculture. The faculty seemed to be more concerned with their own professional advancement, and they publish stuff we can't understand." Agricultural economics was moving into econometrics and complex mathematical analyses, which wasn't being translated into language and operations that the commercial agricultural people understood. So it was perceived that the Giannini Foundation no longer was really addressing problems of agriculture. 229 Kendrick: Also, some of the things that the commercial representatives were interested in were not really academic research. As the pressure for academic advancement continued to exist, assistant professors and assistants in the experiment station realized that their future depended upon their ability to produce research that had quality in the eyes of their peers. They sort of drifted with the academic current, and often those kinds of research problems were somewhat remote and abstract as far as commercial needs were concerned. Lage: That answer probably didn't satisfy your agricultural constituency. Kendrick: No, it certainly didn't. Restructuring to Meet the Practical Needs of Commercial Agriculture Kendrick: So we went through a number of changes of administration to try to construct a Giannini Foundation that would be able to address the problems of commercial agriculture a little bit differently. One of the first things I did to address that problem, after receiving some administrative advice from the executive committee, was to decouple the directorship of the Giannini Foundation from the chairman of the department at Berkeley. There was also some degree of rivalry between the Berkeley Department of Agricultural Economics and the Davis Department of Agricultural Economics. The Davis department felt that they were getting only what was left over from the meager funds of the Giannini Foundation and that they were not being treated favorably, relative to their ability to address some of these problems and in the support of a library of their own. That friendly academic rivalry exists today, and probably will always exist because it's the nature of academic competition. Lage: And of the relationship between Davis and Berkeley. Kendrick: Yes, it comes to play there. One of the things we tried in the early 1970s before separating the department chair from the directorship was to appoint an active associate director of the Giannini Foundation, who was given the responsibility of trying to develop a program within the Giannini Foundation with what resources it had, and also with the expectation that it would obtain outside grant money to support particular kinds of research problems. 230 Lage: To focus on the more practical needs? Kendrick: Yes. And that was done but not forced upon the director. The executive committee of the foundation was willing to try whatever would reduce the climate of criticism as far as the external community was concerned. The man whom I asked to become this associate director of the Giannini Foundation, and work with the chair, was Dr. Ken Farrell. (He is now my successor as vice president.) Ken operated with a level of frustration for several years trying to persuade the faculty to address some of the problems. But it was a frustrating experience for him. He then had an opportunity to go to Washington, D.C.. in the United States Department of Agriculture, as the deputy administrator of the Economic Research Service. And that is where he went. I won't describe his career because he can do that later. Lage: He'll have his turn, maybe in twenty years. [laughter] Kendrick: But that was his last official association with us. He was. at the time that I asked him to assume the role of associate director of the Giannini Foundation, an extension agricultural economist with Cooperative Extension. So he was a known quantity with a good reputation as an agricultural economist, even then. Lage: It almost seems as if this kind of research belongs more in extension. It's very practically oriented. Kendrick: Well, it probably does now, with a redefinition of what extension's mission is, and with more emphasis on practical research in extension than exists in the experiment station. But at that time, that kind of work was the prerogative of the experiment station, and it was protected very much by the experiment station. The attitude, even when I was in the early years of the vice presidency, was that extension was incapable of doing research. And it took quite a while to neutralize that attitude and the feeling that Cooperative Extension didn't have adequately trained personnel to pursue research. There was a certain justification in that attitude, because initially the training of many individual members of extension was short of Ph.D. and masters degree education. They didn't have an exposure to the experimental method, and statistical analysis of the results was not widely practiced. So there was some justification in believing that the personnel in extension, in those early days, was not a trained research staff. But as the educational requirements for appointments, particularly the specialists, was increased and ultimately held to be the same for extension specialists as it 231 Kendrick: was for initial appointments in the experiment station, there has been less criticism of that differential now, and I think quite rightly so. Well, the next attempt to reorganize the Giannini Foundation so it could stand on its own was to separate the directorship from the chair at Berkeley. With the help of Chet McCorkle, who at that time was the vice president of the University, we were able to generate a half of an FTE to go with the half-FTE which the Giannini Foundation resources supported, and we created a new FTE, a full-time-equivalent position, for a director. We went recruiting for a director, and found Del [B. Delworth] Gardner at Utah State University. He was a full professor, who had a good reputation in the field, and we persuaded Del to come and be the director of the Giannini Foundation. We arranged for him to be appointed to the Davis Department of Agricultural Economics, but indicated that the headquarters of the Giannini Foundation would continue to exist at Berkeley, due to the fact that the library was there. It also seemed to us that this arrangement would facilitate cooperation between the members of the departments at Davis and Berkeley. Riverside didn't really have enough personnel to contribute much to the foundation's program. It was always a source of disappointment to the Riverside administration that Riverside was not able to have a department of agricultural economics, but that goes back prior to my time. I think it was due to Harry Wellman's view that we didn't need any more [laughing] agricultural economists in the University of California. I may be jumping to a conclusion that's unwarranted, but I'm not so sure that that's off the mark. At any rate, the agricultural economics activity was centered on the Berkeley and Davis campuses. Del continued to function as the director of the Giannini Foundation and did a pretty good job of elevating the visibility of the foundation. But I think he had, over the course of his five or six years' tenure in that role, increasing difficulties persuading his colleagues on the faculty to address some of the more practical problems that were surfacing. It was a period when I was sort of relaxed about the foundation because I had a director, and any inquiry I received which needed attention I just sent on to the director and asked if he could take care of it. Del wound up taking care of it, but he wound up taking care of most requests pretty much on his own. He really wasn't able to obtain the commitment of the broad array of the agricultural economists, who existed in the two departments, in the program. So it was kind of a frustrating experience for him. When Lowell Lewis came to my staff, we were still having frustrations with the Giannini Foundation, and I turned the problem over to him as the director of the experiment station. 232 Kendrick: He and the executive committee subsequently designed another way to handle the Giannini Foundation. Del resigned from the directorship and became a full professor of agricultural economics in the Davis department. The next iteration for managing the Giannini Foundation was to use the executive committee, chaired by the director of the experiment station. So for a while, Lowell Lewis was the director of this governing board for the Giannini Foundation. The executive group consisted of the chairs of the departments at Berkeley and Davis, and the group leader in extension for the extension agricultural economists, plus an additional representative from the two departments, and there may have teen an additional extension component also, I'm not sure. Lage: It sounds as if the foundation had no leverage to apply to counteract the academic direction. Kendrick: I think you're quite right. The foundation doesn't have any leverage because it doesn't have very much money for programs of research. If I were to characterize leverage as far as my own responsibility for the total program was concerned, I would say my leverage was money and persuasion. And I found that money was the biggest persuader that I had. Lage: [laughs] That sums it up, probably, for a lot of your programs. Kendrick: Well, I think that is very true. And the reason I say that is because, as we will subsequently describe in some of these programs within the experiment station, the lack of leverage was due to the lack of flexible money to allocate to people to conduct particular programs of timely importance. Lage: So if you had flexible money to support research, and you could define a particular research problem, you could find someone to carry out the research. Kendrick: That's right. What I really needed was a big fund for grant money, where we could define the terms of the grant in such a way that you could make short-term grants of one, two, three, four, five years, and at the end of that period you would have the money returned to you and you could redirect it to something else. Lage: Did you approach the agricultural community who were asking for these changes in the foundation? Kendrick: Yes, I suggested that we should establish an agricultural research foundation and make grants from it. But I was always reminded that, "Well, the state already appropriates sixty million dollars to you. Why can't you find flexibility in that 233 Kendrick: sixty million dollars?" I'd go through the standard explanation. "Yes, I have all that money, but I don't have any control over most of it because it's already supporting people who have tenure and who are regular members of the faculty. And I also have an agricultural field station that I could close, but that doesn't seem the way to manage a program. So I'm left with less than a million dollars of flexible money." These are the kinds of things you have to consider when you're trying to administer a program and keep your resources flexible enough so that you can direct them to current problems. Well, the Giannini Foundation, as I understand it to now operate — it was when I left office — has an executive committee, but instead of the director of the experiment station being the chair, they elect a chair. Or, if they don't elect a chair, it alternates periodically between the chairman of the department of Berkeley and the chairman of the department at Davis. The committee administers the program of the Giannini Library. They have a few fellowships that they can grant from the fund, and they make research grants to applicants for particular kinds of defined programs. So the Giannini Foundation, with what money it does now have that's flexible, operates as a granting agency. Lage: And are they committed to try to grant research funds for these more practical problems, or — ? Kendrick: I think they tend to grant them into short-term definable programs that lead into what the executive committee regards as important current economic issues as far as agriculture is concerned. Agricultural Issues Center The Idea and the Funding ## Kendrick: Since we're talking about the Giannini Foundation, let me slip over into the Agricultural Issues Center. One might say, "You've got the Giannini Foundation, why do you need an Agricultural Issues Center?" This organized research unit is in the experiment station, and it includes extension, so it's not just exclusively experiment station personnel. It had its origin at one of my retreats with the Executive Bulls. I'll explain what the Executive Bulls is. It is an informal organization that meets twice a year, for a twenty-four hour period, composed of representatives of agricultural enterprises, widely diversified 234 Kendrick: as far as the activities are concerned. The representatives who are members of the Bulls are the senior managers of the activities. What the group does is hold a bull session, so hence the name Executive Bulls. I was kind of shocked to be included in an organization called the Executive Bulls because I thought it pursued [laughs] other kinds of activities. But. nevertheless, it is a group that I became quite fond of, and it was an important source for me in assessing what the current problems affecting the agriculture enterprises in California were. Well, in one of these sessions, I roomed with an executive from the Kellogg Foundation. The Kellogg Foundation made grants to institutions to pursue particular kinds of problems, such as programs to improve and expand computer use in agriculture or programs to improve the transfer of technology to practical use. These are mere examples of a wide variety of programs the Kellogg Foundation has supported over the years of its existence. Well, this representative of the Kellogg Foundation and I were discussing Kellogg's program, and he indicated to me that they were interested in fostering the development of regional centers addressing policy matters affecting agriculture. And that they had in mind setting up four regional centers and a national center to study policy matters. I thought to myself, "Well, if Kellogg is going to fund regional centers to study policy issues, I'm certainly going to go after one for the West located in California." In order to meet the requirements of the grant. I came home and appointed a committee to design a program and a budget. The composition of the committee included representatives of several different disciplines, but it had strong representation from the agricultural economists. I also included representatives from Stanford and Santa Clara — because if we were going to have a regional center, we had to make sure that we were including more than just Berkeley or the Davis campus in this program. Also, on that initial study committee was a representative from the business world, the former vice president for agricultural affairs for the Bank of America. Chairing that committee was Alex McCalla, a professor of agricultural economics at Davis, who was one of my administrative supporters during the period when he was the dean of the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences at Davis, and also an associate director of the experiment station. Alex was a very good chair who also was very good at conceptualizing things. He was a good builder. He was just the right kind of a chair to put in charge of developing that concept. Lage: Was this done without grants, yet, from the Kellogg Foundation? 235 Kendrick: Yes, that's true. It was done with our own resources. The notion that I tried to transmit to the steering committee was that I wanted a program that was broader than economics. I thought that the policy matters affecting the future of California's agriculture dealt with toxics, dealt with environmental issues, dealt with labor issues, dealt with marketing issues. In addition, I could see that the genetic engineering matters were coming to the front, and those were policy issues also. So there were economic issues, as far as marketing and foreign policy and the like, but there were also some other issues that weren't based primarily on economic concerns. Lage: Kendrick: What date do you have for this? started? Do you recall when this all Well, the center is about three years old, and it was about 1983 that we began talking seriously about it. And the idea was for the committee to develop a grant proposal to send to Kellogg. Well, they worked very well and put together a marvelous program that I thought was just what we needed. Kellogg, in the meantime, decided that they would like to start slower than originally planned. So they established a national center to see how that would operate before they entertained any proposal for regional centers. The national center was located in Washington, D.C., at Resources for the Future — the organization that President Hitch headed up briefly, when he terminated his presidency at the University of California. At Resources for the Future, they found Ken Farrell, who was a fellow of Resources for the Future, and he became the director of the national Center for Agricultural and Food Policy Research. So that's where the Kellogg grant wound up, at a national center. Meanwhile, having charged up this committee — and they produced such a good product — I decided that I wanted to get some funding into it. So I put it in the asking budget for '84, I think it was, at a half-million dollars, in order to get it off the ground and get it started. I expected the agricultural industry representatives of California to say, "Now, finally he's doing something useful for us," and it would have a lot of support in the legislature, and it would go through with no trouble. It was David Gardner's first year as president, his first budget. 1984. He thought it was a great idea, too. As a matter of fact, he spoke in support of it when he was talking to agriculture groups. He was one of my best lobbyists, in a sense. So I felt pretty good about it and was very surprised to find 236 Kendrick: less than enthusiastic interest among California's organized agriculture in the University's establishing an agricultural policy research and study center. Lage: They didn't see it related to their immediate needs? Kendrick: I ultimately found out what the problem was. Commercial agriculture does not trust faculty to meddle with policies that might affect their economic well-being. There had just been published about that time a paper that got a lot of publicity written by a member of the faculty — not in agriculture — from Berkeley, and co-authored by another person from UCLA, suggesting that the citizens of Los Angeles were subsidizing the agricultural enterprises in the San Joaquin Valley to the detriment of the cost of water delivered to Los Angeles. Now. that's a long and complicated story, and it's full of debate. The assumptions that people make for their points of view are not necessarily congruent, but the topic makes alarming headlines, when one reads about the so-called unfairness of the water distribution and costs associated with agriculture in the San Joaquin Valley versus southern California. That had no sooner appeared in print than my phone began to ring, asking me how I would let people publish such nonsense. Well, it was sort of "here we go again." [laughter] Jim Kendrick does not tell the faculty what they can and cannot publish. But I would point out to these complaining individuals that if we'd had something like an agricultural policy center with some kind of a review policy in place, that irresponsible claims would be at least reduced to a minimum because we'd have a review process that made sure that claims and assumptions and facts were indeed supportable, and not just somebody's idea. But that point, again, was lost. Lage: I can see you try to turn most everything to your advantage. Kendrick: Well, I try. [laughter] But I guess that's the politics of the situation. Anyway, the half-million-dollar request got pruned to a $250,000 request before it got into the governor's budget, and that was just an economy measure. Then it worked its way through the legislature, and even this meager $250,000, which would have been quite helpful, was having problems because agriculture's representatives weren't rushing forward to say, "It's a great thing, you've got to support it." And if we couldn't get the agriculture people to support it, you can be certain that the legislature's Ways and Means Committee wasn't going to go out of their way to just give the University extra money that agriculture thought that they didn't need anyway. Commercial 237 Kendrick: agriculture was certainly leery of the University developing agricultural policy, which they thought was the purpose of the proposed center. So, we spent a lot of time in Sacramento in support of this, and I wrote an editorial in the California Agriculture suggesting that studying policy was different than advocating policy or supporting particular actions; that the University was the proper vehicle to analyze policy options so that agriculture would have some knowledge of what their alternatives were and what their options were. But that distinction was somewhat obscured. In social issues, it's very difficult to separate study and research of policy matters from the perception of advocating one position over others. In technical matters, we, of course, advocate all kinds of policies — we advocate certain actions because they would increase yields or control more pests and diseases. In studying policy matters, you tread very lightly in taking advocacy positions because you're dealing with political and emotional subjects, and the University's faculty and staff are not policy-makers. They shouldn't be. But that's a fine line to walk, and we have members of the institution who don't understand that fine line. They find themselves advocating certain kinds of policy — the small farm group, for instance, with their interest in the 160-acre limitation, had some rather strong statements made about that. So it's an advocacy role that makes life difficult for someone who's trying to be objective. I was going to say how this got resolved. It was suggested that if we take "policy" out of the title, and change "policy" to "issues," and it became an agricultural issues research and study center, that we would not have as much problem. Lage: Now, who suggested that? Kendrick: They were the representatives of commercial agriculture, the Sacramento lobbyists. So, I said, "That's no great problem, I'm just stubborn enough to try and educate people that we're not policy advocates, we're policy researchers but I'm also a pragmatist, and I would like the center because I think it's needed and I think it can make a significant contribution, so if you think it takes 'issues' rather than 'policy' in the title to get this thing off the dead center, I'll go along with it." So it ultimately became the Agricultural Issues Center. And it looked like it was going to get through with no more problems, at its quarter of a million dollar budget level. In an attempt to reassure the agricultural community that we were not going to be a threat to their prerogative to determine policies affecting their own welfare, we hired Dick Lyng to survey a select number of California's agricultural leaders. 238 Kendrick: This was just prior to his being appointed secretary of agriculture for the U.S. and while he was working out of Washington, B.C., as a consultant. He had the confidence of practically all of California's agricultural leaders, and we hoped that his intervention on our behalf would help in gaining their support. Dick also asked these leaders for ideas concerning issues they felt important to study. In the end he gave us a written report on the results of his survey with suggestions for the advisory board and issues which needed attention. I believe that his role in the process of gaining political support for the center was very positive. At any rate, he was convinced of the value of having a center to study these agricultural issues and he supported it enthusiastically. Just when it appeared that we had successfully countered all of the criticism and would get the center funded at $250,000, the budget got whacked again in a mark-up session in the Ways and Means Committee, because a lot of issues were being heard affecting the University's total program. The legislative analyst had given a negative recommendation of the issues center, on the basis that, although it was a good program and there was nothing wrong with its conceptualization and its need, it was something that ought to be funded by the agricultural interests themselves. I'd gone that route, and I didn't really want agricultural interests funding this center because I wanted it free and unencumbered from any kind of specific influence. I think we were going to be able to beat that criticism, but the legislative analyst was losing nearly all of his recommendations concerning other issues in the University's budget, and the University's position was being sustained in almost all of them. They came to the Ag Issues Center, and the comment from one the legislators was, "Well, maybe we can let the legislative analyst win one of them." [laughter] So they took a hundred and ten thousand dollars off of it, and I wound up with $140,000. Lage: Not too much to get something going. Kendrick: It was almost down to the point where I considered briefly saying, "Well, if it doesn't seem that important, we won't take the money." The notion I had was that if you give in completely, you create the attitude that, "Well, they'll get along with whatever we give them." It really kind of emasculated what the original concept of how we would approach that program — but we decided we'd swallow our pride and take the $140,000 and do with it what we could, and demonstrate that we had a program of value. We hoped to augment subsequent budgets through grants or go back at them with another request. The last act that I created in the budget just before I retired was to put in a request for another 239 Kendrick: hundred thousand dollars to augment that original appropriation. That got lost — it emerged and stayed in the University's budget, bat it got lost in the legislative battle again. Choosing a Diverse Advisory Board Lage : So there isn't a strong commitment — or an understanding of it. Kendrick: I think the center and its program are gaining a reputation for usefulness and visibility. Like all such programs as they get started, they have to demonstrate their worth and the usefulness of their contributions. Hal Carter, a professor of agricultural economics at the Davis campus, is the director. The center was designed to have an external advisory board to help guide the direction of the program. I decided that I would appoint that board so the vice president could maintain some involvement with the center. The board was composed of twelve members. It has a representative from labor, and the consumers, and from banking, and water interests, the processing industry, and farming operations. As a matter of fact, the legislation that authorized the establishment of this center defined the broad areas of representation which should appear on that board. Lage: Was that based on your design? Kendrick: It was based on material we put into the legislation. And the board is of high quality. Lage: Is there such a thing as "the" water interests? Kendrick: No, there isn't. I had fun trying to find the kinds of people who I thought would bring an objective, open point of view to the board. I can't recall offhand the names of the people who were on the board — you can probably augment that in due course. But the water interests [laughs] are at least represented on the board by an interesting person, who is an attorney, the senior attorney of a firm in Riverside. The firm in Riverside is Best, Best, and Krieger, and the attorney is Arthur Littleworth. Arthur Littleworth served on the ad-hoc water commission appointed by Governor Jerry Brown to study the water problems of California. Art has become very knowledgeable in water policy and water law. He represents water districts in some of the legal claims, but over and above that, I've talked with Art a number of times about water and water problems in the state of California. He has in my judgment a very good understanding of 240 Kendrick: the fundamental problems of distribution and the value of protecting environmental qualities and the like, and responding to the domestic needs as well. The interesting thing about Art's relationship with the Kendrick family is that he was president of the Riverside City School Board, when Evelyn was a member, and he and Evelyn were the two who had to run for the re-election in 1966. So it was a personal link, as well as one that I felt would bring a lot of quality to a board of this nature and would also get southern California represented on the board. He has taken a deep interest in the center. The chairman of the board is Bill Allewelt, a retired chief executive officer of Tri-Valley, the large food processor — canning tomatoes and peaches, mostly fruits, some vegetables. But tomato canning was the big backbone of the Tri-Valley operation. Bill is a graduate of the University of California at Davis, in agricultural economics. He is a member of the Executive Bulls and a demonstrated successful agricultural manager, one very dedicated to the mission of the University of California and knowledgeable about agriculture, whom I've stayed in touch with regularly. The banker who I appointed to the board is president of the Bank of Stockton, Robert Eberhardt, also a regent of the University of the Pacific, and a person quite knowledgeable about agriculture financing. He had served on the banking commission for the state of California. The labor representative who I asked to serve was at the time chairman of the Agricultural Labor Relations Board, Jyrl James- Ma ssengale. She is a lawyer with a law firm in southern California and had represented management in some instances in dealing with labor- management problems. She was appointed by Deukmejian as chair of the Agricultural Labor Relations Board. She's a black lady and was trying to bring peace and objectivity to the Agricultural Labor Relations Board, but she of course was not perceived by the Cesar Chavez group as being sympathetic tc their point of view. She has subsequently resigned from that position, but she remains on the Agricultural Issues Center board. The environmental and consumer interests were represented by Lois Salisbury, from Public Advocates law firm in San Francisco. I was not able to get well acquainted with Lois because she was busy having a youngster at the time we were beginning to meet with the board, and she was unavailable for those first meetings. She brings a point of view that's well thought out, but it's certainly contrary to seme of the traditional agricultural 241 Kendrick: viewpoints. Both Hal Carter and I felt she would be a valuable addition to the board because she could at least keep the traditional agriculturalists on their toes. In addition. I asked Henry Schacht, who writes a column about agriculture which appears regularly in the San Francisco Chronicle, if he would serve on the board, and he agreed to do so. The dairy interests were represented by a dairyman from the Modesto area, Arnold Barcellos. Lage: Now, what would be the role of the board of a group like that? Kendrick: Well, they're advisory and they attempt to keep the program of the center relevant to issues that were important to the future of California agriculture. Lage: So they work with the director — Kendrick: They work with the director — Lage: — to define the problems — Kendrick: Yes. And the vice president meets with them. Another member of the board is the owner of a large successfully operated vegetable and fruit produce firm in southern California, Howard Marguleas, the chief executive officer of Sundesert. His company markets dates, citrus, tomatoes, watermelons, and grapes. Howard is a very successful entrepreneur in agriculture. Henry Voss, president of the California Farm Bureau Federation, and Gray don Nichols, a successful farmer in the San Joaquin Valley and in the Sacramento Delta region, are also members of the advisory board. So agriculture is well represented on the board. I think the board is composed of significant people, who represent an array of activities that characterize California's agricultural enterprises and organizations interested in agriculture. Lage: Just one comment to keep you on your toes here: I would guess that the person you had to represent labor really wouldn't be somebody very well accepted by agricultural labor — not just Cesar Chavez, but in general. Kendrick: I had problems seeking that labor representative, and I probably could be questioned on why I didn't get organized labor on the board, but I did not want to create an environment in which I had a battle on my hands at every meeting. Lage: But what about somebody like Harold Gilliam, whom you had as representative of the environmental movement on another board, who is not a leader of an environmental group necessarily, but 242 Lage: somebody very knowledgeable and sympathetic to the environmental movement. Wouldn't there be a counterpart for the labor movement? Kendrick: Well, that's where I perceived Ms. James-Massengale to be very knowledgeable about labor laws. It wasn't because she happened to represent management on some issues in the National Labor Relations activities that I chose her. She knew a lot about labor, labor law, and labor organizations. A lawyer can represent one side or the other, and I was anxious to have labor's viewpoint and labor's concerns expressed on the board, but I didn't want to create a board in which I had my traditional agriculturists sitting glaring at the labor representative and never really addressing the issue. It just becomes an argument. I chose very carefully to try and get the viewpoints on the table without polarizing the individuals because they don't like one another. And that is not easy to do in agricultural labor relations, because it's a very emotional issue. Water's another one, and I chose, I thought, wisely there because I chose a known quantity, a person who was accustomed to arbitration, and accustomed to negotiation, accustomed to listening to an opposing point of view and working his way objectively through an analysis of all the issues. That's not always possible to do in agricultural matters because there are some strongly held views on one side or another. When one refers to the agricultural industry of California, it really doesn't describe the agricultural enterprise of California. It's not a unified industry such as you find in the automotive industry producing more or less a single product. It is an amalgamation of anarchies [laughter], in that everyone is for themselves. The citrus grower isn't particularly concerned about what happens to the lettuce grower — except if it becomes a common labor issue. Then they go marching together. But if it's a marketing issue, let the citrus people take care of themselves. Lage : So it is not an industry in the usual sense of the word, that is defined with uniform goals. Even water separates them, the northerners and the southerners. About the only thing I know that unifies agriculture at all are labor and taxes. And that's two of their big issues. I noticed in those farm magazines that they focus on labor and taxes. Kendrick: Yes. That's right. Lage: I noticed that you appointed a couple of women to this board. Was that a new step for the agricultural division? 243 Kendrick: No, I had previous advisory committees with women serving on them. I wanted minorities as well as women represented on this board. The last person. I appointed to the board is an executive from Sun Diamond — the Sun Diamond public affairs officer, Richard Douglas, who had spent time in the USDA as one of Dick Lyng's staff aides. He's a black agricultural economist. I think we did pretty well getting women, minorities, and the traditional and nontraditional agricultural activities represented on a board that doesn't have very many positions to fill. I left my successor with one vacancy on the board. It was intended that each member have a three-year term with reappointments permitted. In order to start that sequence and create an overlap of membership, we determined one, two, and three— year appointments by lot for each of these first appointees. That center was my last creative act as far as trying to do something for the future of the program in research and extension. I would guess that the jury is out on whether or not that is going to take. They don't have a lot of money to operate on yet. It has good leadership. Its board is enthusiastic and very supportive; they see the need for the program, and they are people who are not without influence. Making the West a Force in Agricultural Policy Kendrick: The other motive I had in trying to get an issues center established concerns national issues. The West does not get well considered in national agricultural policy. It is perceived to be sort of specialty- crop agriculture; it has many commodities and crops that get into commerce, and therefore when you line up the growers of vegetables or fruits and nuts against the Midwest corn growers or soy bean farmers, they are easily outnumbered. They don't have near the influence in national policies because agriculture policies are dominated by corn, wheat, soy beans, beef, and dairy interests. Irrigated agriculture, or range agriculture, is sort of regarded as western agriculture, and it can take care of itself, or it gets traded off in various options. Economists and spokespersons for agricultural policy are more apt to emerge from the midwestern or eastern universities such as Maryland, Georgetown, Harvard, Iowa State, Michigan State, or Minnesota. And while we have a number of western people who participate in specific events — we have had a few who served on the President's Council of Economic Advisors as agricultural representatives — the West doesn't have a very strong voice when these policy matters are discussed at the national level. We haven't had an organization that has been identified 244 Kendrick: with paying particular attention to these national or international issues. And that's what I had in mind in trying to get an Agricultural Issues Study and Research Center established with a great deal of visibility, so that eventually a person or a group or a committee addressing national agricultural issues might automatically think, "Well, have we heard from that western agricultural issues center? What is their point of view relative to this matter or that matter?" Lage: You'd think that argument would appeal both to the agriculture community here and to the legislature. Kendrick: Well, it does. But agriculture is not sure that they want an academic voice. They want their own voice, and the history of this center working with commercial agriculture is too recent for them to see what the product of an agricultural issues center is vis-a-vis their needs. And I think it's going to take years to work that thing through. You don't create a reputation overnight. Lage: No, that's right. This is a long-term — Kendrick: So I'm not disappointed with what we've got going here; I think if it serves any usefulness at all. it will grow and be supported. If it doesn't, it will disappear and be a memory. But the other thing going for it is that the former director of the National Center for Agricultural and Food Policy is Ken Farrell, who is now the vice president of the University's agricultural program. I'm sure that wasn't a primary reason why he was appointed my successor, but it certainly doesn't hurt having his interest and his former experience in the national center brought to bear to oversee this regional center. So I feel quite good about this as a program. This is an example of an activity that I would never have been able to put together as an inexperienced, young administrator in the early stages of my responsibility. I had to do a lot of politicking. It's a good example of how important external community relationships and internal politics within the University are in order to accomplish something in the University. If I hadn't been able to get this item in the President's budget in the first place, it wouldn't have gone anywhere. Developing Support for Agriculture in an Urban Society Lage: Was it a struggle to get it in the budget? Kendrick: No, it wasn't. The President — David Gardner— saw this as a useful contribution almost immediately. 245 Lage: He sounds very supportive of the agriculture division. Kendrick: Yes, he is. Lage: Is there something in his background that makes him sympathetic? Kendrick: He jokingly refers to the fact that he had some early exposure to practical agriculture on an uncle's ranch, or farm, in Montana, I think it was. He quickly perceived that that was not a future that he wanted to be engaged in; it was hard work and long hours [laughing], and the economic return wasn't very great. So he, like most of us, is of an age to have had grandparents or parents in some kind of agricultural enterprise. But that experience is fast disappearing; most of the people presently in their thirties and forties have no vivid memory of any kind of agricultural association. I didn't grow up on a farm; I'm a product of an academic family, but both of my parents were raised on farms, and Evelyn was raised on a farm. Her parents were farmers, and you get back one generation from mine, and almost everybody had some kind of an agricultural association. The younger members of today's society do not have the understanding of agriculture's contribution to their well-being and value system that we have traditionally had in our population. And that's another factor in the difficulties of operating an agriculture-supporting enterprise in the present urban- dominated society where the legislature is an expression of urban society. It's difficult to convince people that some agricultural programs or problems are as important as AIDS or poverty or homelessness — and I would be presumptuous to assume that some of them are as important. I would say no, they're not as important as some of those excruciating problems associated with joblessness and job displacements, and the like. You have to manage these affairs so that they fit into a total program in a relatively compatible way, not to the exclusion of somebody else's major problem. Crime in the street, the drug scene and all the rest of it are issues that people in the legislature have to wrestle with. Do you put your money here, or there? Do you put it in the Agricultural Issues Center or do you put it in prisons? [laughs] Unless you're willing to help people think their way through that, and not get upset because your pet project doesn't get supported immediately, you're in the wrong business. You've really got to come after these things in a totally open, objective way, and that's why I perceived the vice president's role to be an advocate for the agricultural needs and to interpret for the agricultural community how we fit in dealing with total societal needs. My role was to try and explain to agriculture that there are other competing needs of society, as well as trying to 246 Kendrick: advocate the agricultural needs at the same time. I found it fun to be in that role. But it certainly is a challenge and somewhat frustrating at times. Well, we spent a lot of time on two issues, or two units of activity, but I think they are important activities as far as the experiment station and extension programs are concerned. And extension has a major share of the program responsibilities in the issues center. Kearney Foundation for Soil Science Genesis and Direction Kendrick: The first attempt to introduce flexibility of funding so that we could address programs of more current interest than it was possi ble with previous special appropriations was done with the Kearney Foundation for Soil Science. There was a fund created by the Uni versity for the pursuit of soil science research, which resulted from the sale of property in the San Joaquin Valley, the Kearney Ranch. That property was originally given to the University with the hope, at least, that there would be a campus of the University of California established in the lower San Joaquin Valley. And was pursued rather vigorously by the [Chester] Rowell family. Lage : Now, when was this? Kendrick: That goes back to Robert Gordon Sproul's time. The San Joaquin Valley interests really wanted a med school. I think, but they also wanted a campus of the University. I don't know if it was felt the property was surplus to the University's needs or it wasn't located where a campus would be desirable, or what, but for some reason, Bob Underbill, who was the secretary-treasurer of the Regents, sold it and got a good price for it. Part of the proceeds from that sale were set aside by the Regents to function as a foundation for research in soil problems affecting agricul ture. So the Kearney Foundation for Soil Science became a reality. In the early days of its existence with its handsome annual yield of several hundred thousand dollars, it was administered by the chairman of the Department of Soil Science at Berkeley. Lage: So it was something you inherited. Kendrick: Yes. And it became rather identified as an augmentation of the supporting funds for the Department of Soil Science. When Perry Stout of Soil Science moved to Da\ is, the fund went to Davis with him because he was administering the program. 247 Kendrick: My Administrative Advisory Committee, which consisted of the deans and the directors, all agreed that we should try to change the goal and administration of that foundation fund. We conceived of a program which was unique, somewhat bold, and continues to operate today. What we wanted to do was establish five-year programs, with a different director for each program, with a budget that consisted of the yield from the investments of the foundation's funds. It was designed to be a mini-granting agency. The only requirement was that the problem defined for the five-year project be in soil science or related subjects. The problem was to convince the existing director of the Kearney Foundation, who was Professor Perry Stout, a long-time Berkeley faculty member who had moved to Davis, that this was in the best interests of the future of the Kearney Foundation. We wanted to set up an advisory committee to select a problem, and to suggest a director, and to then provide oversight during that five-year period of the research activity. It all seemed like a very fine idea at the time. We were able to do that, without too much dust in the air. Perry Stout cooperated beautifully, somewhat to the surprise of many people. They thought that Perry was going to be too possessive of his prerogative to run it, but he — Lage: Had the funds been used previously to fund whatever the soil scientists happened to be working on, and now you were going to try to control the choice of research subjects a little bit more? Kendrick: That's correct; that a good way to describe it. We thought it had been confined a little too much to the departmental activities and particular problems that Perry Stout felt were important. We felt that we needed a broader base of input into the direction of the overall program. The technical advisory committee that we put together was broadly representative of soil scientists and extension personnel in the University of California. It selected nitrogen and its fate in soil as the first five-year program, and identified as the director for that five-year program, Don Nielsen, who is now the senior associate dean in the College of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences at Davis. We owe Don a lot of credit for establishing the ground rules and the operational mode for the moving five-year project which ha subsequently characterized the foundation's program. An important aspect of the rules governing the projects of the foundation is that none of the five-year programs could be renewed for an additional five-year term. We wanted to automatically interrupt potential dynasties. 248 Kendrick: Another stipulation was that we would not renew a director's term. Each director had to be someone identified with the current research problem. Lage: What was the thought behind that? Kendrick: Well, we just didn't want any single program to monopolize the future, and we wanted to preserve the flexibility of the fund. Another stipulation was that the headquarters for the foundation would be on the campus of the selected director. So it could be at Davis, or it could be at Riverside or Berkeley, wherever the faculty home of the director was. And that, in fact, did happen. The importance of that concept was that it was very difficult to move resources from one campus to another, particularly regularly budgeted funds. We gave the entire budget of the foundation to the director and his advisors to administer in any way they wanted to. So they could call for proposals and make research grants. Lage: They hired the staff on a five-year basis? Kendrick: Yes. And then they use a certain amount of the support to wind things up into a publication, or a workshop, or a symposium, or what have you. The concept I had about continuing the program was that, if it was of such current interest and importance to the field of soil science, then other funding sources would move in and take over. And, in fact, they did — the National Science Foundation pursued a number of things in the nitrogen program. Lage: And was the public presentation a part of it also — you mentioned some kind of a workshop or — ? Kendrick: It wasn't all that public, but this particular one ended up with a two- or three-day symposium, a discussion of the results. But there were ongoing contributions and publications. So it was really quite a successful venture. The next topic selected was a study of the fate of heavy metals in the soil system. The director was Al [Albert] Page of Riverside. Lage: When you pick a director, do you look into their administrative capabilities? It seems that you need certain talents that you don't need to be a professor, in order to administer a granting agency. Kendrick: Well, I'll have to admit that that wasn't the primary requirement. First and foremost, we picked someone who had a reputation and knowledge of the subject matter. It turns out that the people we've selected all have had reasonably good competence in administering a program such as this, and of 249 Kendrick: course, there's enough money to provide some administrative support. If you needed to augment the departmental staff so that you'd have an administrative aide to take care of the ruts and bolts of keeping track of the funds and other administrative duties, that was possible. Then the next five-year program was a soil-water salinity program with John Letey at Riverside as the third five-year director. He is a professor of soil science at Riverside. Flexible Response to the Kesterson Crisis Kendrick: We're into the fourth cycle now, so that we've just gotten another program started, and the Kearney Foundation's program has moved back to Davis with Kenneth Tanj i as the director. He came on board just in time to inherit the Kesterson problem. What pleased me most was that because of the importance of the selenium accumulations and its toxicity in the Kesterson reservoir, the director and the advisory committee delayed the program of the Kearney Foundation one year and directed the funding that would normally go into that program to study the Kesterson situation. Lage: Kendrick: ** The level of funding had reached, I think, three to four hundred thousand dollars annually. This is a model that I really think could serve the cause of flexibility well in the future. Because we had this system in place when this Kesterson problem came along and had not yet committed funds from the foundation into the next five-year program, the decision could be made to divert that first year's yield into the Kesterson situation and problem. Ken Tanj i, who was the designated director of the fourth five-year program for soil sciences, was also a co-leader of the Kesterson research project. But only one year spent on it, or — ? That's the only year that I'm aware of that the foundation's resources were diverted to that activity because we then went for special appropriations for the solution to Kesterson. Rather than having to wait a year to get some special appropriations, here we had an opportunity to do what our external clientele had been telling us to do, which was to reallocate from existing funds. And the only way we had money available to do so was because we had the foresight fifteen years earlier to increase the flexibility of a significant amount of money which happily was available to meet an emergency. 250 Kendrick: I think without that kind of a flexible funding, we would still be waiting for the legislature to appropriate enough money to divert people from existing commitments in their regular programs into some of the research programs that were needed to address the Kesterson problem. The Kesterson Waste Management group was put together rather quickly as a task force. The director of the experiment station and one of his assistants, who was his program coordinator, assembled people in both the experiment station, extension, and anybody else who had expressed an interest, including the water center people, at a meeting to see what we knew about the problem and what we could do about it. That waste management task force was another one of the devices that was used to mobilize for specific kinds of problems the resources of the experiment station and extension into units that could address those problems. That same kind of technique had been used about fifteen years earlier to form a committee of consultants for agricultural water quality standards. When the water laws and water quality control boards came into existence in the state of California, one of the requirements of the legislation was for districts to define their own water quality standards. I don't know just hew many districts there are, but there are quite a few — maybe fifteen, or twenty. And those water districts' boards were composed of lay people, primarily, and some engineers. They employed consultants to help them define what they needed to pay attention to as far as defining standards for domestic water quality within the district. But the boards found themselves uninformed when they came to consider agricultural matters and what agricultural waters did to water quality in general, as well as what agricultural activities required as far as quality was concerned. It's no secret that agricultural crops don't grow well when water with high content of certain heavy metals or salinity is used to irrigate them. Some of the boards came to the University seeking help in dealing with these matters that affected agriculture and water quality. So we formed primarily within Cooperative Extension a committee of consultants composed of knowledgeable people in irrigation and water matters. Some experiment station people were also included in the committee. The chief contributor and leader of this activity was Bob Ayers, who was an extension specialist in irrigation. Bob has since retired and is living in Davis. That consultant group performed in a handsome manner, contributing when called upon for the information needed to establish water quality standards in those districts seeking help. So in a way, we had experience in assembling experts under the direction of a coordinator to deal with problems that kind of popped up unexpectedly with no real planning for them to be on 251 Kendrick: our active agenda. The Kesterson situation was handled in a similar manner, but the problem was a little bit different, and the solution is complex as well as difficult. Working in this program has been complicated by the competing activities of several federal and state agencies each with some responsibility for regulating water use and runoff. So the task force is a useful technique that has evolved to handle issues that are, as I say, unpredictable, and sort of come at you in a hurry. Slosson Fund for Ornamental Horticulture Kendrick: One of the early-on unexpected funding augmentations of another defined program of our organization was done in support of ornamental horticulture. We had an extension specialist in Cooperative Extension by the name of Harry Butterfield, long since deceased. Harry was kind of a one-person encyclopedia of ornamental horticulture, who worked very closely with garden club organizations and people interested in gardens and urban plantings. He provided a great deal of service, and I think he helped organize the Garden Clubs of California into a state society. In the course of doing that, one of the people whom he helped was a widowed lady by the name of [Elvenia J.] Slosson. Mrs. Slosson was the early founder of the California Garden Club Association. Harry had worked closely with her for a good part of his career. Well, the result of this good relationship was that Mrs. Slosson left the University a million dollars to be used to enhance the public's appreciation of ornamental horticulture through both the research and extension. Since Harry Butterfield was in extension, there was a strong committment for using these funds to address the practical needs of persons who were trying to enhance ornamental plants in an urban setting. Having a million dollars at my disposal was more than I'd been accustomed to receiving. We set up the fund as an endowment so that only the income from the million dollar investment was available for the program. I appointed a committee to advise me on how best to use this money. We started with the concept of a Slosson Fellowship for which we would make a major grant on a competitive basis to a member of the faculty for a period not to exceed five years. The Slosson Fellows had an obligation to make a useful contribution from their research program to practical ornamental horticulture. The first Slosson fellow was Toshio Murashige on the Riverside campus, who had a strong research program in cultivating embryos of plants and freeing them of viruses. This embryo transplant technique has become very widely used in the ornamental nursery industry for propagating plants. 252 Kendrick: But in due course, the advisory committee became a little disenchanted with granting all that money to one person; they thought it would be more useful if we had a stronger extension component and had grants to more people, so we changed the methods and goals for the Slosson Fund. We dropped the Slosson fellow concept and asked the Slosson Advisory Committee to deal with grants and spread them around the system. So we have another fund, like the Kearney Foundation for Soil Science, a fund that supports defined programs. The advisory committee has also adopted a five-year emphasis of particular programs within the expanded topic of ornamental horticulture. Mosquito Research Program; Broadening Decision-Making for a Cooperative Effort Kendrick: The mosquito research program was one that I inherited which had had kind of a stormy existence because it had participants who were interested in mosquito research for entirely different reasons. The external group interested in what the University was doing in mosquito control research were the managers of the abatement districts. California is organized into mosquito abatement districts, which are supported by local taxes. These districts have as their goal the control of mosquitoes within their boundaries. The manager is a locally employed person who is charged with keeping the mosquitoes from annoying people and transmitting diseases. Another component group interested in mosquito research is in the Department of Health Services, formerly called the California Department of Public Health. And the Department of Public Health had a unit in vector control monitoring and research and also had a unit in research on the control of mosquitoes. Another unit, not under the control or direction of the vice president for agricultural sciences, was in our own faculties of the two schools of public health, one at Berkeley and one at UCLA. The two units outside of agriculture that were engaged in mosquito research were interested in epidemiology in relationship to the onset of malaria, sleeping sickness, and other mosquito- borne diseases affecting public health. Then we had within the experiment station in entomological units at Berkeley, Davis, and Riverside, people who were doing research in mosquito control, and mosquito epidemiology. That unit was more or less directly under the program of the Division of Agricultural Sciences. All of these diverse units had a common interest^ but they were coming at it from a different perspective. 253 Kendrick: Also there was some funding in the California Department of Public Health for mosquito research that, before I became the vice president, was moved to the University of California in support of research because of some disenchantment by the mosquito abatement district managers with the California Department of Public Health. And there was some resentment, as one might expect, in losing a program in the California Department of Public Health to the University. Another thing that sort of characterized mosquito research, of which I became aware in due course, was that it was good news media material. As far as public news media was concerned, we seemed to constantly be discovering a promising new mechanism to abate mosquito problems. And somehow or other, mosquito problems continue to exist. The new method somehow wasn't really a panacea for control; it wasn't as good as it promised to be. Our researchers, however, continued to keep the public's interest high on these new discoveries. That frustrated not only the mosquito abatement district managers, but also people who paid attention to research in mosquito abatement. I began to wonder how I might bring all of this together and have a cooperative program that would restore the confidence of the district officers and the public in what would be perceived to be a useful, needed program in mosquito research. Lage: Were you getting complaints that made you turn your attention to this? Kendrick: Yes, I would hear from, particularly, the managers of the districts. They were complaining about not receiving useful information, and that it was not being made available to them. It was an ongoing program, but it certainly was not well- coordinated because the experiment station group was pursuing the problem from their own perspective, and the public health groups were doing research based on their needs. I thought, once again, this calls for a committee, [laughter] When in doubt, form a committee. But, as trite as it sounds, it is really the only way to introduce different perspectives into a common forum so you can begin to discuss what those issues are and see if you can't arrive at some accommodation for everybody's needs and wishes. So that was done. I had all the parties that I just described represented on this Mosquito Research Advisory Committee. And I chaired it, at least initially. I believed that what was really needed was someone who could give the mosquito program full-time attention. One of the strong persons who helped me organize was Bill Reeves, Professor Reeves, of the School of Public Health in Berkeley; he is an 254 Kendrick: entomologist. He developed a career in mosquito research and the epidemiology of the vector control. And I quickly determined. and Bill and the committee also agreed, that we needed an extension- type individual to coordinate all of the research and to relate regularly with the abatement district managers. So we brought a well- qualified person in from Colorado, whose name I don't remember. That was the first step in putting a rationale into the program. We added this coordinator to extension's staff, but he didn't really function as a typical extension person. I told him that I wanted him to pay particular attention to the various needs of the district people and to organize and manage the granting part of the program. We had several hundred thousand dollars to oversee and I wanted to be sure that the money was going to programs that were of current interest and had scientific validity. So in the experiment station, we asked the entomologists to organize an entomology steering committee that peer-evaluated the applications for funding from the mosquito fund. The mosquito abatement district organization had a research group in their organization which had a great interest in the University's research program. I asked this group to review the research proposals and to prioritize them according to their views. Finally, the University Mosquito Research Advisory Committee, which had representatives of all participating groups, evaluated the requests and made the decisions concerning the awards. That format has continued. The original person, identified as [laughs] — I like to call him the head mosquito — did much to quiet the nervousness about the system. He worked very well with both federal and state agencies and local district managers. We were searching for another person to assume this role, and just before I left office. Bruce Eldredge from Oregon was invited to come down and assume an appointment in the experiment station with the charge that mosquito research coordination was his primary responsibility. The major deficiency of the program, while I was associated with it, was my inability to bring the locally-based Cooperative Extension people into the program, even though a Cooperative Extension position was assigned the responsibility for the coordination of mosquito research. It was difficult to engage the local county offices into mosquito problems, for reasons I'm not sure I know. It always seemed to me that the locally-based Cooperative Extension people were in a pretty good position to work with mosquito control programs, particularly in rice-growing regions. The rice-land water contributed a lot to the mosquito problems in northern California. Many agricultural operations also lead to mosquito production; waste water collections and the like were a part of the problem. 255 Lage: Why did you have trouble engaging Cooperative Extension? Kendrick: I don't think the coordinator worked with Cooperative Extension the same way other extension specialists did. Lage: It wasn't necessarily resistance on the part of Cooperative Extension? Kendrick: No, I think it was the fact that the normal responsibility for mosquito control rested with the abatement district managers. They're the ones who have the contacts and who deal with the local communities. I think it was a case where a public agency had the primary responsibility for controlling mosquitoes so Cooperative Extension did not have this program high on their own agenda. I had no quarrel with that view, but I did expect Cooperative Extension people to work with the abatement district people when the mosquito problem was associated with an agricultural practice. ff What I've been describing are mechanisms used to respond to identified agricultural needs in an environment where there really wasn't very much flexibility in the ongoing appropriations from state and federal sources. The fundamental research program in the experiment station is the aggregation of many projects where something in the order of twelve hundred to fifteen hundred projects are active at any one time. But this array of research projects are categorized into a classification system so that you can increasingly aggregate the projects of the experiment station into broader and broader caregories, such as pest and disease control, or agricultural production, or nutrition. So for the purposes of administrative convenience you could say that 60 percent of all resources were going into agriculture production kinds of activities and maybe 5 to 10 percent were expended for nutritional quality kinds of programs. Those kinds of statistics get you into as much trouble as they do in providing an understanding of where your funding is being expended because special interest groups have different points of view relative to whether or not you were overemphasizing or underemphasizing particular programs by the allocations of resources. Lage: If you make someone happy, you're bothering someone else. Kendrick: And there is a lack of understanding that in order to shift resources, I had to shift people. It's not easy to shift an agricultural engineer into the program of labor relations. You make essentially a lifetime commitment to a person when you employ them in a ladder position on the faculty of the 256 Kendrick: Agricultural Experiment Station, and you make a similar lifetime commitment to the career of the person in extension. Even though tenure is not a part of the Cooperative Extension system, it's pretty secure employment as long as the individual remains productive and active. That's just another way of saying that there's not a lot of flexibility to adjust your programs quickly once you make those commitments. The only way to have flexibility is to have a broadly-based continuously employed staff so that you can call upon particular specialists when a problem emerges, unless you're talking about a long-term basic research program, such as in biotechnology or in toxic waste management and the like. Ajid the techniques I've described are ways of utilizing a little bit of money that becomes available to make specific grants to individuals to buy their time and attention away from an already busy schedule into a focused research and extension program that has some practical utilization in agriculture and natural resource problem areas. Most of the faculty and staff are busy and fully committed. You have to interest them in doing what you want them to do, at the expense of disinteresting them in doing what they want to do, and for which they already may have some funding support available. The problem is accentuated if you are dealing with a particularly skillful research worker who has oodles of money from the National Science Foundation, or the National Institutes of Health, or some other granting agency. You must interest that person in, for instance, the problem of selenium accumulation in the ground water system in the Kesterson region if he or she is a person who has the skills you need to work on that particular problem. After arousing the person's interest you must then have resources available to support whatever effort that person can devote to the problem. Well, that's not all that easily done. But the techniques I've described were successfully applied ar.d did diversify our program in research when these particular kinds of problems arose. San Joaquin Valley Agricultural Research and Extension Center A UC Program for the San Joaquin Valley Kendrick: One of the things that was established early on was the San Joaquin Valley Agricultural Research and Extension Center, located at the Kearney Horticultural Field Station, one of our nine agricultural field stations, located near Parlier, about twenty miles southeast of Fresno. This was a concept to increase 257 Kendrick: the visibility and activity of research and extension in the San Joaquin Valley by assigning academic and extension people to that center. It was in contrast to our other field stations, which merely provided facilities for research. This was a modest attempt to respond to the long-time yearning of the San Joaquin Valley interests for a campus of the University of California in their area. So there were experiment station personnel and extension specialists located in augmented physical facilities at Kearney. It is a difficult concept to understand; those of us administering it could understand it, but the external community certainly couldn't see the difference in activity between a field station and a center. It was really quite different because we had departmental members from Berkeley, Davis, and Riverside, as well as extension specialists assigned to the center. Presently, there are about eighty people at this center, and we've shortened the name to the Kearney Agricultural Center. The center has buildings of its own, the most recent of which is under construction costing about five million dollars, to provide more research space. The center is administered by an executive committee of three persons and it will address agricultural problems characteristic of the San Joaquin Valley. We wanted to make it a true agricultural research and extension center for the Valley. Lage : It sounds somewhat similar to what the Citrus Experiment Station might have been initially. Kendrick: That shows how well you are grounded in the background with agriculture. You are precisely right. It is in a sense an early edition of what the Citrus Experiment Station was originally. The difficulty of staffing the Kearney Agricultural Center with academic personnel is that once they're located away from a campus, their future promotions and advancements become more difficult. They are removed from day-to-day contacts with their colleagues on the campuses, who will ultimately sit in judgment of the quality of their work. Moreover, until you have a critical mass of people representing several disciplines, and a library, and a few students around, it is difficult to be a real self-starter and perform in a manner that is deemed acceptable by the University of California in these non-campus areas. That's the primary reason why we've never located very many people from the academic community at these field stations; instead, we have kept them as facilities for campus-based people to conduct their research on a need basis. But the Kearney Agricultural Center still has the potential for being another Citrus Experiment Station. In my judgment, it really depends on whether or not the ultimate funding and the 258 Kendrick: numbers of people associated with it will become sufficiently large to become a unit of its own, with its own budget and ability to determine its own destiny. There are people who think it may, and there are people who think that the nature of the University's advancement system is such that it mitigates against its ever becoming anything other than an expanded field station facility. I think that the real challenge is to develop an academically acceptable program at Kearney without trying to convince the regular campus-based faculty that they could operate at the Kearney Agricultural Center effectively and still protect their future. I proposed that we try locating at the center a post-doctoral cadre of people who have term appointments and who realize that they would not be there for their entire career. Such an arrangement would provide an opportunity to the post doctoral person to gain experience in practical problems associated with agriculture. They could conduct research in an environment where the public would be watching them doing things that they thought were important, and they would have an opportunity to relate directly with the agricultural clientele. I think the concept is worthy of trial because it would provide a period of internship for future agricultural research people without committing to long-term employment of permanent personnel. Locating extension specialists there is less of a problem because their kinds of activities are precisely those that are deemed to be of practical nature, and their advancement does not suffer by their activities at such a center. And as long as there are enough academic people there, they don't lose touch with or the stimulation of associations with academic colleagues. So the commitment of an augmentation to the facility, I think, is something that President Gardner was interested in pursuing because we really hadn't had very good visibility as far as the total University of California was concerned. In spite of much agricultural activity by the University, it's been somewhat diversified. It needs to be more visible and perhaps more coordinated to receive the attention it deserves. The University's program visibility is important because we have Fresno State University in that same region. The agricultural people at Fresno State are constantly suggesting that they're the ones who are addressing the practical problems of agriculture, and that the University is only interested in basic research and therefore has withdrawn from those things that the agricultural community deems important. Well, that's not true. But impressions and perceptions are what build budgets and persuade appropriating agencies, so there's more than just pride at stake here. We need a broader- 259 Kendrick: based recognition of the agricultural programs of the University of California in the San Joaquin Valley and an active support of their value and importance. We've had good support from that area in the past, and that we cannot treat lightly. It will go away if the politicians and their supporters perceive that we're too purely academic to address the practical problems of agriculture in the region. Whether the concept of a Kearney Agricultural Center develops fruitfully or not I think is problematical. It has a budget of its own which is separate from the field station budget. I was involved with a special appropriation request from the state for the center early on in my vice presidency. I had to help shepherd it through the legislature. We started out again with about a half a million dollar request and wound up with about half of that amount. Administrative Changes Lage : So this goes way back. Kendrick: This goes back to 1968-69. The administration of the center has undergone several administrative changes. The biggest boost the center received was when I asked Bill [William B.] Hewitt, who was a professor of plant pathology, to direct the center's program. He had been the chair of the Department of Plant Pathology and a few years before he retired wanted to move from Davis. He thought that this would be a good opportunity to do something worthwhile so he accepted the appointment as director of the San Joaquin Valley Agricultural Research and Extension Center. I also gave him the title of an assistant director of the Agricultural Experiment Station and he became a part of my administrative counsel. Under Bill's direction the center functioned pretty well as a unit. Bill was a vigorous administrator, a person who perceived the importance of the program in the area. He stepped on a few toes and irritated a few people because he had no tolerance for unproductiveness and slovenliness. But he gave it a good deal of visibility. Lage: How did he do with the local community? Kendrick: They thought he was fine. He met with them regularly, and he was sympathetic to their needs, and they perceived that the University was interested in their problems. The irritations were from the University people whom he was trying to push and direct into productive activity. 260 Lage: People on the staff. Kendrick: On the staff. But I have to give Bill a lot of credit. We haven't had that kind of vigororous leadership for this program since his retirement. The last director of the center didn't work out very well, and he has resigned. The center is now run by a committee. Lage: [laughs] The ubiquitous committee. Kendrick: The ubiquitous committee. The local academic staff in both extension and research have agreed to follow the method of designating department chairs on a campus. The dean usually consults with the departmental members about whom they might like to be their chair. If a majority of the people agree on one of the dean's suggestions, that person is likely to be chosen as the chair. If the majority of the people say, "Under no circumstances would we work with that person," the chances are pretty slim that the dean would appoint that person because it's rather crucial to have somebody as the leader of a department who has the respect and support of the membership of the department. So that's the way in which the academic unit at Kearney is being administered presently. The manager of the local field station has a busy agenda of his own, just keeping the management of the property and the crops going. That person receives a certain amount of public attention by the nature of his position. At Kearney that person is Fred Swanson, who is a capable person and who cooperates well with the academic chair. Now, just to complicate the picture, we have the regional director of Cooperative Extension also located at Kearney. The regional director of all the Cooperative Extension programs in the central San Joaquin Valley and the central coastal region is Bill Hambelton. So we have three admini strative people on the committee who have administrative responsi bilities for the activities of the center, and in the Valley. Following Bill Hewitt's retirement, I perceived that having three people with split responsibilities was an impossible way to administer, so I made an impossible assignment to one person, [laughs] Andy Deal, who was an extension specialist in entomology, located at the Kearney center, was made the regional director of Cooperative Extension, and I decided to appoint him director of the field station and director of the Kearney Agricultural Center in addition. So he bore the brunt of being administratively responsible for three diverse activities and ran himself ragged. He did a very credible job of trying to keep all this coordination going, but he had a very different personality than Bill Hewitt. Bill was very blunt and candid about things. and Andy tended to not disagree or be disagreeable, and so there was a different kind of leadership in that era. 261 Kendrick: When Andy retired we looked for another Bill Hewitt type and found him, [laughs], and he quickly alienated a lot of the people whom he should not have — not on purpose; he was just a misfit. So then by mutual agreement he stepped aside. And now we're back to the administration by committee. I think that's not necessarily how it will ultimately be resolved, but my successor is going to see how it functions before he makes another move. The Future of Cooperative Extension: Regional Centers? Kendrick: In the long-term plan, we have two other agricultural centers that we were trying to bring into being. One is in Imperial County, where we had hoped to locate both extension and research activities at the Meloland Field Station to serve Imperial Valley and desert agriculture in general. We had planned to move the Imperial County Cooperative Extension staff to that center. That plan ran into some political problems with the county board of supervisors. County-based Cooperative Extension must be supported by county budgets, and we had several members of the board of supervisors who were unenthusiastic about financially supporting Cooperative Extension at a university facility. Lage: What were they afraid of? Kendrick: Well, in the first place. Imperial County was extremely poor. It's in one of the depressed areas of California, and it really didn't have much money left to make any long-term commitments to non-mandated programs, but the concept of county support is essential for Cooperative Extension. There was a particularly irate member of the board of supervisors who really — I think if the truth were known — wanted the location of Cooperative Extension and the agricultural commissioner at a center located in a different place, somewhat removed from the University of California. The University of California is not an endearing institution to everybody in the state; it's regarded as arrogant in some places and irresponsible in others, and they cite evidence that sustains their points of view. So that Imperial County Agricultural Center, I think, is still up in the air. The Cooperative Extension personnel in Imperial County are now located in old county buildings, and whether or not they get moved is not very soon to be resolved. It's one of the problems I left my successor. 262 Kendrick: The other area where we were trying to develop the concept of an agricultural center was with the USDA [U.S. Department of Agriculture] in the Salinas area. We are pursuing, I think still, without bringing it into being, an agricultural center for the central coast. Not just for Monterey County, or not just for the Salinas Valley, but the whole coastal area, which has an agricultural characteristic of its own. The USDA has a research center located in Salinas that gives attention to lettuce breeding and some agricultural mechanization studies. They have a nice facility there, and we were negotiating with them for the location of a University operated field station and the Monterey Cooperative Extension program at the same location. Such a development would be identified as an agricultural research and extension center for the central coast region of California. Lage: You worked with USDA, then? Kendrick: Yes; we were negotiating with them on that concept. That still is possible, in my judgment, but it kind of depends upon the status of the economic picture. There's a lot of willingness, but there has to be some accommodation over jurisdiction. That always rears its head, about who controls, or who's going to be in charge. So just about the time you get all the ducks in order, the USDA changes its local leadership, and we have to go through negotiations all over again. But it's my view that these regional centers are apt to be ultimately viable, and there will be more of them, and they will be largely staffed by extension. I think extension's role in each county will become diminished as the budgets become more difficult to be achieved, and the problems that extension will address will be really more global and more diffuse than specific how-to kinds of questions that have been the traditional menu of extension activities. How soon that might happen, I don't know, but I really believe that extension's future is going to be sustained only if they aggregate themselves into regional areas rather than county- centered offices. The downside of that regional organization is that you lose local support. So one should not just ignore that downside issue, unless you're prepared to support the regional centers from some other source — if you cut back and have it supported through your federal and state funds in a way that compensates for the losses that you're going to achieve by moving out of the local situations. 263 Integrated Pest Management Program A New Concept of Disease and Insect Control Kendrick: There are three other programs I'd like to cover before we end this session, and they all resulted from augmented funding. The reason they are viable is because they did receive special appropriations. They are the Integrated Pest Management [IPM] Program, the Wildlands Research Center, and the Agricultural Sustainability Program. Let's go back to the IPM program first because it represents an attempt to promote a different concept of disease and insect control, a changed emphasis from what had been the traditional way of looking at control on a piecemeal basis by plant pathologists and entomologists. The integrated pest management term was introduced by the entomologists and was intended to incorporate biological control as a tactic in the control of pests. It was a perfectly sound concept because what they intended to do was to model plant growth in addition to studying insect life cycles, a fairly new concept as far as entomologists were concerned. The introduction of modeling of plant growth and studying the plant's susceptibility to particular kinds of damage by insects was first developed most completely by studying cotton, cotton insects, and cotton insect control. By modeling and understanding what influenced various stages of cotton growth and when the bolls and the blossoms were most susceptible to attack by insect pests, treatments could be targeted to just the susceptible periods. This improved information did much to reduce the amount of insecticides applied to plants as a protective measure. So the IPM concept was beginning to develop as a practical means of control in the early 1970s. Lage: Was it a reaction in part to the environmental concerns, or to the loss of pesticide effectiveness? Kendrick: Well, both. I think it was certainly not hindered by the concerns about contamination of the environment. Its development was made possible because of the computer. The introduction of computers into the research program was crucial. With the amount of information accumulated on growth of plants and pests and the effects of factors in the environment such as temperature and moisture on their growth and development, measured as often as each day for the life of the plant, you can get a basement full of data that you can't handle with a hand calculator and a pencil. With the introduction of the computer, you've got a capacity to store that information and regurgitate it in a way 264 Kendrick: that you can run correlations and find out what is or is not significant. Without the computer, development of the IPM program would have floundered. So concern for the environment. concern for toxics, and the evident loss of effectiveness by a number of widely used insecticides because of the resistance of certain insect populations — all congealed at the right time. The concept of bringing all this epidemiological information together for analysis was certainly not a new concept — plant pathologists had done it most of their lives. When I described my earlier program in the control of bean root rot, I think I said I tried everything I could think of to try to eliminate bean root rot — that is, change varieties, alter planting dates, and apply fungicides to the soil — that's all IPM too. It's bringing every facet of information to bear that you can possibly accumulate relative to the plant, the insect, or the plant pathogen, and see whether in that relationship there's a weak link. You may be able to target that and interrupt the sequence of disease or insect damage. Lage: Does it tend to be a team approach? Kendrick: It has to be a team approach. One person cannot master all the specialities required because you've got to have crop specialists, plant pathologists, entomologists, weed control specialists, together with perhaps the toxicologists and biostatisticians working together. I determined that we really needed to put some money into this program, so I asked some well-established entomologists and plant pathologists to design an IPM program. This occurred in the early 1970s. Nothing useful arrived on my desk in terms of a propo sal, and I was frustrated as well as disappointed in my colleagues. I concluded that I had asked the wrong people to do this job. So I decided that I needed a committee of young people whose careers were ahead of them to address this problem and design how they might like to see it put together. I appointed a committee headed by Andy Gutierrez, a professor of entomology or. the Berkeley campus in the Division of Biological Control. He is a computer expert and systems analyst. He chaired this effort with representatives from Davis, Riverside, and Berkeley. In a short period of time, they produced a very useful and workable report. It became the basis for the establishment of the IPM program. I was seeking a program that I could take to the legislature and request funding for its support. I have to describe Andy as irreverant and outspoken in his relationships with his colleagues. He was pretty outspoken about discrimination, very outspoken about what he thought was the second-class citizenship of biological control people. 265 Lage: So he came out of a biological control orientation? Kendrick: Yes. He was the disciple of Robert van den Bosch. I think some people were surprised that I asked him to chair the committee, but he certainly responded in great fashion to the charge. I think he also saw an opportunity for [laughs] biological control to emerge from the shadows into the forefront of IPM. But he was very helpful and his concept was sound. With some modifications. I then went forward with a proposal. I made some modifications concerning the representation on the advisory committees and technical committees, all of which was screened through my Administrative Advisory Council. I talk like a lot of this was all done by me. That's not true — Lage: Was the initial idea for this integrated pest management program yours, or did someone else come forth — ? Kendrick: Well, as I say, the basic concept of IPM was entomological. It was already in existence; I was just thinking that I wanted to broaden it into a UC program and get some state funding behind it. I wanted it not just to be entomological, but I wanted it to include plant pathology and weeds as well. While IPM was conceived as an insect management program, I knew that plant pathology also had a place in an integrated pest management program. If I'd had the opportunity to go further with it, I would have changed the terminology so that it would have been known as an integrated plant health program, without identifying a particular threat to plant health. But the nomenclature was fixed. IPM was the wave of the future, and I caught that wave and tried to ride it. Developing Budgetary Support in the Jerry Brown Administration Kendrick: Well, I proposed a program with a manager, the director of the IPM program, much like we had with the Kearney Foundation for Soil Sciences. We'd had that experience, and since it was successful we wanted to set IPM up with the same level of administrative arrangement. So we went to the governor and the legislature — it was during the Saxon administration — requesting a five— year augmentation of our budget so that we end up with a five million dollar annual appropriation. We proposed starting with a couple of a million dollars to get it off the ground. « 266 Kendrick: Now, I recall that this requested augmentation occurred around the time I was having trouble with the legislature about allega tions of inattention to the small farmers, discrimination against Hispanic employees, and farm labor displacement by mechanization research, so there was a lot of unhappiness in that body. Along comes this proposal to augment our budget to pursue an IPM program. Well, much to my surprise, I received support from all quarters for this program. It came from environmentally concerned organizations, it came from the chemical industry, and it came from agriculture — you couldn't have asked for a more diverse group of special inter ests to come together to support this program. It also came at a time when the Department of Food and Agriculture was faced with increasing difficulties in policing the use of agricultural chem icals. This was during Rich Rominger's directorship of the Depart ment of Food and Agriculture, and Jerry Brown was the governor. I remember meeting with representatives of both the Legislative Analyst's Office and the Department of Finance during the formation of the governor's budget, and we were receiving the usual comments about, "Why do you need additional money for the program?" I said, "Well, it's not a case of need as much as it is a case of urgency. We'll continue to work in this program with our present resources." We had just completed work and had published a pear pest and disease manual. It had taken about ten years of work by several extension workers and experiment station people. I said, "We probably can cover one crop about every ten years. If that's the way you want this program to operate, we'll continue to do so. But if you want it accelerated, if you want us to cover more crops as we propose to do, then it's going to take this amount of money." That tactic really worked. It was put on the basis of, "I don't need it, but you're the ones who are after me to do it, so if you want me to do it, it really is going to require some augmentation of our budget." Rich Rominger was totally supportive of the program. He knew that we needed alternative means of addressing the insect and pesticide problems of the state. The Department of Finance went along with it but said the governor would have to decide whether he wished to support it. That's when I had the brief exchange with Jerry Brown and Rich Rominger at a luncheon meeting in San Diego at which the governor was a featured speaker. We had a three-minute conversation with him, in which he asked Rich if it was an important program, and Rich said, "Yes, it certainly is. Our future really depends upon the University being able to do effective work in this area." And the governor said, "Okay, we'll do it." That's the way the IPM budget was launched into the political process. Lage : You mentioned different interest groups that supported it. Did you or your staff contact the lobbyists for the.se interest groups to get their support? 267 Kendrick: Yes. When we were designing the program, the Environmental Defense Fund, for instance, was a significant group that supported it. We made certain that they were aware of what we weie proposing. They didn't have input in the design of the program but were represented later on the policy advisory committee, which was created to permit all the interested parties to stay in touch with the program. Lage : So you were kind of bringing in a new support group. Kendrick: The reason that broad-based support was there was because each of the diverse groups saw that the program supported their individual goals. The agricultural chemical industry knew that they were ultimately going to have to have a justification for the use of agricultural chemicals in controlling pests and diseases in a more enlightened manner. The people who advocated no use of agricultural chemicals in the control of diseases and pests perceived that integrated pest management was going to result in a program that would replace those chemicals by biological control methods. The people who were concerned about environmental quality expected that IPM methods would result in the reduction in the amount of chemicals released into the environment. We proposed to study first those crops on which there was a high usage of pesticides to see if we could reduce the pesticide load in the environment. So the program didn't have very tough sledding; it got pruned back a little bit from our original request for support. But it emerged with a million dollars of support, and that was a big augmentation for the agricultural budget, at a time when all the other noise of discontent and criticism was taking place. The IPM was proposed at just the right time to obtain the broad- based political support that it needed to be successfully defended in both the executive and legislative branches of government. It was well designed and had universally acceptable goals. The IPM program was run by a director. Ivan Thomason was the first director, and Ivan was succeeded by Jim [James M.] Lyons. Ivan is at Riverside. He was an ideal director to develop the program. Ivan was trained as a plant pathologist, but his professional career developed as a nemotologist. Lage: Did you appoint these people with advice and faculty input? Kendrick: Yes. Everything involved advice and consent. Ivan was a natural choice from among a number of qualified people. I won't describe the techniques of how the IPM program was put together, but it involved a lot of people as advisors, and an advisory committee for each crop studied. These studies have resulted in some handsome and comprehensive publications. That's one of the best 268 Kendrick: things that happened with the IPM program. It published manuals. They're called IPM manuals, and they're probably the most popular publications we've put out in the last decade. So it was a good success story and a model to follow. Wildland Resources Center Kendrick: Now, the Wildland Resources Center has existed on the books for a long time. I think Henry Vaux, Sr., originally conceived the need and put it together. I made several stabs at trying to identify and sharpen up the goals of the program by getting all interested parties together to put together a defined program. It had a modest annual appropriation of $15,000 split between the Berkeley and Davis campuses that didn't permit any significant research effort. The center was barely functional. It was originaly proposed, I think, probably at an inopportune time as far as the budget was concerned because it came when we were suffering from proposed budget cuts prior to my arrival on the scene. We could never get the program put together in a way that was sexy enough to appeal to a legislative group. It wasn't a crisis kind of a program — IPM was essentially a response to a crisis. Wildlands — everybody's for them, but nothing easily defined seems to threaten their existence in the public's mind. Lage: It was a popular concern in the seventies. Kendrick: Yes, but they didn't have a well-organized constituency. Their problems are like deferred maintenance; i.e., other urgent crisis problems replace them in the budgets. So I really couldn't get much interest internally in an augmented wildlands research budget, until Harold Walt was appointed chairman of the State Board of Forestry at the beginning of the Deukmejian administration. (He has a background from Walt's Drugs here in Berkeley.) He's a very vigorous and effective politician who decided that he wanted to do something for forestry research. He was politically well placed with the governor and very persistent. The Department of Forestry and the State Board of Forestry organized a centennial program, a two- year program of laying the groundwork for a significant augmentation of the University's and the Department of Forestry's programs in forestry and wildlands. This was an opportune time for us to join this external political influence and get something in our budget for these overlooked programs. That happened. We put together a program based largely on some of the early studies. I appeared at one of the centennial meetings in 269 Kendrick: Yosemite with Henry Vaux, Sr.. in which I said that the University was prepared to address these needs, that we certainly supported the augmentation of the budget. Well, the long and the short of this is that President Gardner wasn't all that enthusiastic about funding this program at this time because of some other University priorities, but Harold Walt was. I arranged for him to visit with the President, where he pressed his point. I also worked with Vice President Baker, our budget officer, pointing out how much political support and interest there was in the program, and how much good we could do ourselves by having a visible program in this area. We certainly had the support to bring it through the legislature. I knew we'd do ourselves more harm by turning our back upon that support than we would by accepting it and placing the request in our budget. So it got into the budget, and it was supported. We then appointed Robert Callaham director for the Wildland Resources Program, a former USDA Forestry research director, on a half-time basis. He began to mobilize, organize, and coordinate the activities. He is a little abrasive with people under him, but he certainly is a vigorous individual who has entre into the total resources of the University in addressing the problems of wildlands. Lage: This has also become sort of a granting agency? Kendrick: Yes. It's a granting agency. Again, making grants on a specific, relatively short-term basis, so we don't commit funds into perpetuity. That is absolutely essential in these programs if we're going to keep ourselves current. Well, I've lost track of exactly what the status of it is now. I know that this was the first significant augmentation of money in support of wildland and forestry problems in a long, long time. I felt gratified in being able to bring that to bear because it was certainly an area that needed attention, and I couldn't light the spark until Harold Walt came along. Lage: Interesting, especially since Henry Vaux, Sr., was his predecessor [as chairman of the State Board of Forestry] , and he was vitally interested in forestry research. Kendrick: Yes. Henry is a dear friend of mine, and one of the most competent elder statesmen and professors I've ever known in this area, and also, as you mentioned, a former chairman of the State Board of Forestry. But I think Henry would be the first to admit that he's not the politician that Harold Walt is. There is no doubt in my mind that this program is underway today because of the political influence that Walt was able to exert, particularly in the Governor's Office and at the Department of Finance. The 270 Kendrick: Department of Finance wasn't all that enthusiastic about putting this kind of money into wildland research when they had other crisis topics in need of money. But Harold called in his political chips of support for the governor. I didn't kid myself for one moment that logic would prevail in any of this. I had to be ready with the appropriate program at the opportune time and seize the opportunity and run with it. If you're not ready with the likes of an IPM program, or a wildlands research center, or a mosquito research program, or what have you, when the political snowball is set in motion, then forget it. You're not necessarily going to sell programs on a logical basis. The Agricultural Issues Center, on the other hand, was a program proposal based on the logic of need. I think its modest funding is a result of the lack of overwhelming political support. If agriculture had been more enthusiastically supportive we could have easily doubled its state support. Lage: So this gets back to the question on this sort of generalized outline [for the interview series] on how the mission is defined. Kendrick: [laughs] I guess it does. The mission is defined by the external environment, to a large extent, and the capacity of the division to mobilize and to respond to it. And the only way I found to mobilize it is to put money into a program leader's hands and let the leader direct the program. In most of these program initiatives the work of Lowell Lewis, my assistant vice president and director of the Agricultural Experiment Station, was indispensible. He carried out most of the "leg-work" required. Sustainable Agriculture Program Serving Small-Scale and Organic Farmers ## Kendrick: The last program I want to talk about that arrived with another political opportunity is the Sustainable Agriculture Program. It came into fruition at the very end of my administration. It is now, as I understand it, perking along in pretty good shape, but the program initially developed largely because of a high level of criticism that the traditional programs in agriculture ignored the needs of this group of participants in the agricultural scene. Characteristic of representatives of this group are very small farmers, farmers of crop specialties with a limited distribution. Many of them market their products directly in 271 Kendrick: health-food stores, or in natural food outlets in regular supermarkets, or directly at farmers' markets. A lot of them operate in response to the needs of specialty restaurants that make a point of not serving food that has any identifiable chemical additives to their products. Lage: So they are organic farmers? Kendrick: The organic farming enthusiasts have an organization, a national organization. The most renowned representative of that point of view is the Rodale Farm in Pennsylvania. The Rodale Press is probably the principal source of published items that address organic farming. Admittedly, that is the group of farm people in California whom our extension program really didn't pay a lot attention to. Extension's attitude was that we're available to help if they want us, but if they don't come and get us, why that's their problem. We did have an aggressive program for small farmers which included an information center and we also staffed our extension program with several small-farm advisors — Lage: Now, were these programs long-standing or initiated during your administration? Kendrick: This program came into being during my administration when Jerry [Jerome] Siebert was the associate director of Cooperative Extension. He was instrumental in developing the concept of assistance for limited resource farmers who often were not literate in English. It was implemented in response to the general criticism that we weren't paying enough attention to the needs of the small farmer. Also, we filled these small-farm advisors' positions with bilingual people, who were not just Spanish-speaking, but were of Hispanic origin. They found themselves working with agricultural cooperatives as well as people struggling to set up farms of their own in which they had some independence. So it wasn't a case of ignoring those needs; but we weren't really dealing with the organic farm groups. Lage: I would think all these small farmers wouldn't necessarily be organic farmers. Kendrick: No, they're not. They're small because they're economically incapable of starting very large. Small farming, organic farming, and sustainable agriculture were the sources of another editorial I wrote [California Agriculture. July-August, 1985], in which I tried to point out just the point that you were making, that the program was not a synonym for the organic farming philosophy. I said also that sustainable agriculture certainly was not a program that I thought was incompatible with what I thought the agricultural research and extension program at the 272 Kendrick: University had been about all the time. We were not interested in developing recommendations that were going to result in the extinction of agriculture. I pointed out that some abuses and misuses in agricultural practices had resulted in environmental deterioration, but that had not been the intention of all the research. I also suggested that organic farming had to demonstrate its economic feasibility in both production and marketing before it would become a generally accepted practice. Legislative and Public Input to the Program Kendrick: Again, some of our biological control people were advocates of this program, because they're generally the nonchemical proponents of agricultural production. Strong interest in the program developed in Senator [Nicholas] Petris's office. Senator Petris is one of three members of the Senate Finance Committee's subcommittee that reviews the University's budget. Senator Petris's staff was quite interested in the University's diverting their funds and their interest into what was called "sustainable agriculture programs," perceived and interpreted another way: nonchemical farming. Well, Senator Petris's interest in anything the University is doing is not to be ignored. So we probably gave the program a good deal more attention than we would have ordinarily. We were asked to conduct some hearings to determine what the need really was. Robert Peyton was employed by Lowell Lewis to hold public hearings and listen to people complain about what the University was or wasn't doing to help them. Lage: These were Petris's hearings? Kendrick: No, no. These were conducted by us. Lage: Was this something new? Kendrick: Well, we wouldn't ordinarily conduct public hearings, in that fashion. It was a new twist of listening to a client group who felt that they were disadvantaged and not paid attention to. We made a gallant effort to do so. Lage: When was this? Kendrick: It was done in '85. This procedure was encouraged by Petris's office. He was more than just casually interested in our doing that sort of thing and encouraged us to do it. 273 Kendrick: The public hearings resulted in a report and a summary. An external committee was put together on sustainable agriculture, with representatives of the organized groups and Senator Petris's office. Robert Peyton, as I said, was the person we employed to oversee the development of the program, and he was just absolutely the right person. He had the "patience of Job" to sit and listen to the many witnesses. Hearings were held in about four different locations in the state. Everybody felt that he was fair and would listen to their complaints for as long as they wanted to express them. I had many, many hours of discussion with Robert and said, "Don't turn anybody off. We want to give everybody ample time to voice their complaints." Some of them were kind of abusive and pretty hard to listen to. But he performed with good humor as the university's hearing officer. Lage: It was a multi-session hearing? Kendrick: That's right, and it was all transcribed by a court reporter. Well, let me say without going into more detail that the hearings resulted in a proposal for an augmented budget for the University's Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources to conduct a program in sustainable agriculture. It was another case where we persuaded President Gardner that it was politically advisable to include it in the University's budget, particularly since Senator Petris was going to impose something of his own on us if we did not propose something that was at least compatible with our existing programs. We also had an internal academic advisory committee, which worked quite well with the external groups. The academic committee was charged with the responsibility of designing the program. President Gardner accepted my recommendation, and it made its way through the Department of Finance, to the governor and the legislature, and was sustained. I'm not sure just how much money ultimately was appropriated because it occurred just at the time that I retired. I think the proposal was for about a million dollars. At least that's the amount we were talking about at the time. It provided, again, for the employment of a director of the program. Lage: That seems to be an essential ingredient. Kendrick: Yes, in the environment in which we operate, it is. These program directors are responsible to the director of the Agricultural Experiment Station, so even though the director has overall responsibility for all programs, it is necessary for somebody to give full-time attention to these particular programs, and sustain them, and be concerned about them. Lage: Now, will that address problems of small farmers overall? 274 Kendrick: Yes. Lage: Not just organic. Kendrick: Yes. all small farmers. It's not just an organic fanner program. Lage: But you will address those needs too? Kendrick: Certainly. It has an advisory committee with external membership which sits in judgment of the program and its research. It also has an internal faculty and extension advisory group, who try to keep the program academically acceptable. A lot of things that the people on the outside think the University ought to do are just not appropriate to University activities and ought to be done by somebody else. You have to be certain that sort of distinction is understood and carried out; you can't allow the University's program to become less than University stature. The misunderstanding of that incites some of the comments that the University is arrogant. It's not arrogance at all; it's trying to keep the program in the right direction, in the right context. Dr. William Liebhardt was appointed director of this program. He was formerly director of research at Rodale, and he came through a search and screening process that is typical of our usual ways of seeking the most qualified person to fill a position. I think this appointment went a long way to demonstrate to our skeptics that our commitment to this program was sincere. That's the last special program that came along that I had anything to do with. I was pleased to be able to shepherd it through the University budget process, and help Robert deal with the issue, and also help him interpret seme of the traditional concerns of the faculty and staff that he would encounter frcm time to time. 275 XIII ADMINISTRATIVE ADJUSTMENTS TO UNIFY THE DIVISION A Historical Overview [Date of Interview: October 29. 1987] ## Kendrick: We were going to talk today about the administrative adjustments that were made during the course of my tenure as the vice president, and there were a number of them. Lage: Just let me put the date on here: October 29. 1987, our tenth session. Okay, now, you're ready to start; you don't need a question from me. Kendrick: All right. The division was organized when I moved up into the vice presidency in April of 1968 with a director of the Agricultural Experiment Station and a director of what was then known as Agricultural Extension [later, Cooperative Extension]. There was a special assistant to the vice president, Douglas McNeill by name, and the usual administrative assistants, plus some Agricultural Experiment Station and Cooperative Extension personnel keeping track of financial matters and the project system. That was satisfactory initially, but the thing that I noticed over time was that the two directors had most of the action. Lage: The directors of the experiment station and extension? Kendrick: Yes. They were the operating officers of their respective organizations. The role of the vice president was one of coordination and policy review and overall responsibility for the total program. And that was the most difficult thing to do. I think that probably characterized the principal challenge to the chief administrative officer for the division, in those days as well as today. The nature of the two activities of research and 276 Kendrick: extension are somewhat different, and their physical locations are different. It presents a problem of how you operate a unified program with several different functions. Lage: From the beginning, were the two supposed to be coordinated? Is that the goal? Kendrick: I don't think it was ever consciously designed to be so. Both research and extension- type programs were performed by the same people back in the days of Hilgard.* The reason that Cooperative Extension was established in the first place was to have a program to introduce into practice the knowledge that was being accumulated through research efforts by people in the experiment stations. There are various ways of organizing state programs so that that is brought about. Cornell coordinates their research and extension programs by giving their professors part-time extension appointments, thus funding part of their appointments by an extension budget. By that procedure there's pretty close integration of the activities of extension and research. California is organized quite differently. B. H. Crocheron was brought to the University, I think in about 1919. to set up an extension program. It was designed to have a separate staff and be a separate operation, so that the regular members of the University's faculty did not have extension appointments in addition to their research or teaching appointments. There are advantages to both organizations. I don't think that the New York system is necessarily better than the California system. On paper, it suggests that there is a built- in mechanism for close coordination, but as I studied the organization in thinking about some possible adjustments of California's system, it seemed to me that it wasn't functioning any more effectively than our own system. The principal deficiency of the Cornell system is that the extension personnel located in the counties are paid by county funds. So that there is a flaw in the central leadership's ability to exercise appointment authority over the county people and to treat them as fully integrated members of the unit. He who controls the purse strings of the budget really controls the destiny of the program and the people, and therefore there was a lack of central control in New York — which let local units exert their will over what might be seen as being in the best interest of the total program. Lage: I wondered if they had a problem getting the professors to carry out that portion of their appointment as extension service. * Eugene W. Hilgard was founder of California's Agricultural Experiment Station and dean of the College of Agriculture. 1888- 1904. 277 Kendrick: Well, I think they probably did. As I understood it, the amount of time a professor spent on extension- like activities was determined after the fact, rather than before the fact. In other words, there was an accounting made at the end of the year by asking the individual professors, "How much time did you spend in extension work this past year?", and then a guesstimate was made relative to that time, and that became the basis of time spent on extension programs. So I was not really impressed that that system was operating as efficiently as it appeared to be on paper, even though it showed a close paper coordination between research and extension because it involved the same people doing both those activities. In California, I think we built a stronger extension program by having a separate organization of people, and having the specialists in extension added to the staff because they had some special expertise in a particular discipline. Those individuals are now placed in the departments of their discipline and provide the linkage between the experiment station activities and the advisors located in the counties. All extension personnel are funded and budgeted through the University's budget, so there was never any doubt in anybody's mind that county-based Cooperative Extension people were University of California employees. That, I think, was a very wise decision, in the early establishment of extension. But the drawback, and there are drawbacks and deficiencies in every organization — nothing seems to be perfect — is that the organization tends to function as an individual organization, and coordination of programs occurs more by luck than by design. Cooperative Extension initially was run by a very dominating yet benevolent administrator, B. H. Crocheron, who established it as a quality organization. It almost resembled a paramilitary group. People in extension were quite proud to be a part of it and very loyal to their director. They felt somewhat special; Crocheron kept them on their toes because he had no tolerance for mediocrity or slovenliness. So when the chief came visiting, it was almost like a military inspection. Lage : This would be when he visited the county offices? Kendrick: Yes. That military aura diminished with the subsequent administrators, Earl Coke and George Alcorn. Lage: Coke must have had a difficult place to fill, succeeding someone with that much of a personal hold on — Kendrick: Well, I think he did, but Earl Coke came closest to being the ideal successor because he was a strong, dominating person in his own right. He had some different ideas about the organization, but there was never any doubt that Earl Coke was the director. 278 Kendrick: He went on to other responsibilities, including one as an assistant secretary of agriculture. He took leave from his directorship of Cooperative Extension for about a year and a half. During that period, Cooperative Extension functioned with an acting director. The acting director at that time was Wayne Weeks. The Link to the U.S. Department of Agriculture Kendrick: But that's beyond my history. Let's go back to what I am leading up to — in trying to lay the groundwork for correcting what I perceived to be. if not a problem, at least a challenge to bring Cooperative Extension's planning process into a closer link with the experiment station. The director of the experiment station was Clarence Kelly, and the action of the experiment station was really on three campuses, where it was administered by the deans who were also associate directors of the experiment station. One also has to realize that both Cooperative Extension and the Agricultural Experiment Station have funding and program linkages with the United States Department of Agriculture. So they are partially federally funded activities, and from the USDA's perspective, those two operations at land-grant institutions are agencies of a federal program. The directors are recognized as officers of the USDA and the secretary of agriculture gives tacit approval of their appointments. It's a formality, but they are recognized as agents of the USDA. That's necessary for them to have the authority to administer and handle the federal funds that come into the respective programs. Well, that describes a relationship between the USDA and the directors that is clearly understood by the USDA and most of the directors but generally not understood by the University, that is, to an extent not understood or at least accepted by University officers such as vice presidents and presidents who have primary responsibility for their local institutions' programs. The chief administrative officer for agricultural programs at land-grant institutions carry different titles. There are vice presidents, deputy vice presidents, and by far the most widely used title of dean. Each of the people who hold these titles bears the responsibility for both extension and research. But there is no official relationship between these overall administrators and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. 279 Kendrick: That manifested itself in California by the fact that the USDA corresponding offices for extension and research communicated directly with the directors rather than with the vice president. I learned about federal matters only if my directors wanted to tell me about them. Lage: How much of the work of these two organizations was funded by and overseen by the USDA? Was this a major portion of it? Kendrick: Well, not in California. It varies from state to state. California does not have a large USDA-funded extension or experiment station program. About 20 percent of Cooperative Extension's budget is derived from USDA's Smith-Lever funds, and about five to seven percent of the experiment station's budget is composed of the USDA's Hatch fund. Hatch funding for research is allocated to faculty of the three campuses through a project system. Faculty design projects and submit them through the channels of the experiment station administration for approval. Ultimately the USDA's office of Cooperative State Research Service, which is responsible for the administration of the Hatch Act must approve or disapprove these proposed projects. Once their approval is given, an allocation can be made to those projects from the Hatch fund, which comes to the University as a bulk grant fund. The amount of the grant is based on a formula that is really not in California's favor, because it is based on the relationship of the number of farm units, and rural population versus the urban population. We don't fare very well in that formula because of the distribution of our rural and urban populations. Smith-Lever funds for Cooperative Extension are not allocated by a project system but are commingled with state appropriations, unless they are appropriated for special programs such as urban gardening, or farm safety, or the nutritional education program. The regular Smith-Lever funds are allocated to states on the basis of a formula, which, again, did not favor California in particular. They support the overall program in extension through salary allocations. The USDA annually received from the University's Cooperative Extension organization a plan of work, which described by standard categories what had been accomplished during the year and what was proposed for the coming year. That plan of work would be reviewed by the Office of the Extension Service in the USDA, who after commenting about the proposals, would ultimately sign off and approve it. So there were two federal agencies acting on the programs of two agricultural units in the University of California, and there was no evidence that the USDA Office of Cooperative Research and 280 Kendrick: their Extension Service Office ever had any common goals or common discussions about the state's research and extension programs. Lage: So. in Washington the two were not carefully coordinated? Kendrick: That's correct. At the federal level the organization was constructed in a way that kept the two operations separate. In contrast, we had University officers who were charged with coordinating the two activities. Improving Budgetary Control over "The Provinces" Kendrick: Well, other states, I had noticed, organized their programs with deans who had overall responsibilities for teaching, research, and extension. These individuals would carry simultaneously the titles of dean and directors of both units, so that one person had the responsibility for all three functions. That administrative maneuver solved, at least administratively, the communication problem between Washington and the local institution. The operational responsibilities would then be assigned to an associate director or an associate dean. When I took office I was not aware of these different arrangements, but I recognized that something needed to be done to improve our planning and budgeting. The first administrative change I made was in January of 1970, when I added another special assistant to my staff named Russell McGregor. I had become acquainted with Russell through some national activities that I had for the USDA in serving on a committee to review the research program of the Cooperative Research Service. Russell at that time was a budget examiner for the federal Bureau of the Budget, which ultimately became the Office of Management and Budget, OMB. Russell was the examiner in that budget office whose assignment was the USDA's research and extension program. He seemed to be what I was looking for because he had a keen analytical capacity and a planning background, and I thought the division needed that kind of administrative assistance. He willingly resigned from his federal post and came out to assume the planning and analysis role for the division. Lage: Could you give an example of the specific problems that there were that made you see the need for these changes? Kendrick: Well, I'm not sure that I know of any particular difficulty, except that I felt the responsibility to plan effectively and to develop a budget that could be described in program terms. 281 Kendrick: Cooperative Extension was not all that out of step with what really needed to be done, but there was no evidence that its budget development and planning were related to the programs that described the division's activities. The national organization of experiment stations had just developed a classification system because they needed a way to file and retrieve the information from the many research projects being conducted in all of the states. They also needed this system in order to account for the expenditure of funds at various levels of program aggregation. The system adopted was called the CRIS system, Current Research Information System. That came along about 1966. So there was a major effort to get all the projects classified in the new system. The CRIS system enabled us to describe the amount of research effort going into pest and disease control, or in agricultural production, or in water resource studies, or in nutrition and the like. Those are just the broad categories. I felt that in being able to analyze where we were allocating our resources, we needed someone to aid in the planning of future program changes as we sought to meet new challenges. Lage : It sounds as if you were getting better control over the budget. Kendrick: Right. That was the goal. Russ had been doing that all the time for the Office of Management and Budget as far as agriculture was concerned, so he had a good background for the assignment I gave him. That effort was not resisted by our organization; in fact, they cooperated pretty well. Russ was a little aggressive, and he tended to attempt to pry information from campuses that they weren't all that willing to share with the systemwide administration. It's always a struggle between a systemwide administration and the operating units that I refer to as "the provinces." It's kind of a tug-of-war between the two. Systemwide usually wants more information that the campuses don't want to share, necessarily, because if they share it with headquarters then they lose some of their power and control. The same situation exists at state level — the more state funding that goes into local school districts, the less prerogative local school districts will have because the state will want to know how they're allocating and spending state funds. What I've described is not unique to the division; it's just human nature and the nature of organizations. I'm sure it exists in private enterprise also. But it's necessary to get a handle on it because the people held responsible for reporting these things are in central administrations. And I was the one who had to testify in Sacramento as to the validity of the expenditure of state funds for the University's agricultural programs. It 282 Kendrick: wasn't the directors, necessarily, unless I took them along with me to talk about programs in detail. So Russ was the first change. The Day Committee; Resources ## Coordinated Planning for Allocation of Lage: This was still while George Alcorn was head of Cooperative Extension? Kendrick: Yes. George and Kelly were the directors of their respective units. Kelly had asked the late Boysie Day [deceased June 1988] to come from Riverside to assist him. Boysie up to that time was the associate director of the experiment station at Riverside. I think I explained all that in an earlier session. Kelly needed some assistance in managing the experiment station. He was not in the best of health at that stage. Boysie came to Berkeley ir. the role of associate director of the statewide experiment station to give Kelly a helping hand. If you recall in an earlier session, I said I had inherited an academic planning group, which produced a report that didn't go anywhere because I couldn't get any response or interest from the campuses due to a number of administrative changes taking place at Riverside and Davis at the time the report was issued. So recognizing this deficiency, and at the strong suggestion of my own administrative council, made up of the new deans and directors, I asked a special committee to produce a planning document. I asked them to identify in the program structure of the CRIS system where we were allocating our resources and advise me where some adjustments should be made in the allocations in the future, with some attention to timing and phasing the proposed changes in allocation. That committee became known as the Day Committee because I asked Boysie to chair the effort. I felt strongly that I needed representatives from the Berkeley, Riverside, and Davis chancellors' offices in that effort, because I needed their commitment to any plan that would emerge from the work of the committee. Lage: So this was kind of a long-range planning for research? Kendrick: Yes. It turned out to be dominated by research planning. I was really more concerned at that point with the planned allocation of the positions that would become vacant in the experiment station over time. Lage: What areas they should be hiring — 283 Kendrick: Where we should adjust any reallocations if that was called for. Lage: Did you mention earlier that this effort was related to the world food situation? Kendrick: Well, that came on a little bit later, and it came about from the early flurry about the hunger in the world and at least a superficial belief that what we needed to do was put more of our resources into agricultural production activities. The world hunger study was headed by Hal Carter and resulted in a publication called The Hungry World. That activity was a little later than the Day Committee activity I'm talking about. But the Hungry World report certainly turned our attention to the fact that we didn't need to overemphasize the production research activities of the experiment station because there were more crucial concerns relative to the distribution of existing food reserves than a lack of its availability. Furthermore, the report showed that there was a lot of productive capacity that was not yet being used. At least up until about the turn of the 21st century, overemphasizing production in the United States wasn't called for — what was needed was to bring in some new land and new resources and improve the efficiency and use of existing resources in some areas. And it pointed out that, with the exception of Africa, most of the areas were potentially good producers of agricultural products. That, in fact, has been the case. We are observing a worldwide increase in production of agricultural products. The use of modern technology is not unique to the United States, Canada, and Western Europe any more. These techniques have been incorporated into the agriculture of South American countries, also in the Middle East and some other countries that are potentially good producing areas for agriculture. So the United States's problem of world competition in its agricultural trade was due largely to the fact that there's a lot of basic grain supply available to people from countries other than the United States, Canada, or western Europe. That's another subject, but it's related to what must be considered when you are engaged in long-range planning for agricultural research. The difficulty of planning allocations for experiment station personnel was also complicated by the fact that at both Davis and Berkeley, and to some lesser extent at Riverside, we had to factor in the teaching needs. Davis's teaching needs with its rising student population almost dictated the place where you could allocate your future resources, because of the fact that you had to cover certain subject areas which were not necessarily the most crucial areas for your research program. So you had to make compromises relative to the allocation of those resources, and as long as there was a student demand or a student load for a 284 Kendrick: particular kind of activity, you had to be certain that those personnel were assembled so that they could cover and teach those kinds of courses. That is another reason why the chancellor and the vice president had to listen to the pleas of the dean, who had the direct responsibilities of responding to the clamor for more resources to do this, that, and the other thing, particularly in the teaching area. That resulted in annual meetings at campuses where the chancellors and I listened to the deans make their case for the allocation of resources. The chancellors and I would agree to agree on the allocation of our respective resources — not always agreeing with the deans. Resistance to Reallocating Positions between Campuses or De par tme nt s Lage : Is there any specific case that you could describe to show how that would work? Is there one that you recall where you had this interaction between the dean, the chancellor and yourself, and how it was resolved? Kendrick: Well, no particular case. The thing that I discovered in this process of review was that while there was willingness on the part of the local campus administration to move positions from one department to another department on that campus, there was total rejection of a suggestion to move positions from one campus to another one. Allocations within a campus were infinitely easier to suggest and bring about. I'm not even suggesting that moving positions between departments on the same campus was all that easy because departments become very possessive of their allocation of positions too. They don't like to lose resources. The dean has to put up with that sort of thing if he feels strongly about making an adjustment. But it's almost heresy to suggest that Berkeley give up resources to Davis, or Davis give up resources to Riverside, or send Davis resources back to Berkeley. That didn't happen. In all my experience, we negotiated only a couple of FTE moves from Berkeley to Davis. There was some reluctance on the Berkeley administration's part to do so, but the logic of the move seemed so compelling that it was made. It was much easier to make those changes in the previous administrations. particularly when Claude Hutchison was the dean, because they moved whole units. Lage: The entire department? 285 Kendrick: He moved entire departments. In those cases there was no loss of resources for the department, which is always difficult to accept. If you move an entire unit, it probably was better for the unit in the long run because the administration often had new resources to put into the unit, or would build a new building for it. So there were gains to be made relative to those kinds of moves. Reallocating existing resources among units that have to get along with one another is not necessarily a gain for all parties. Lage: When you talk about reallocating resources, does this mean a professor is retiring and his replacement would be in a different department? Kendrick: That's correct. We never disenfranchised an active person. We are talking about positions, not individuals. You described it correctly. When a position became vacant due to a resignation or a retirement, then that position was available for reassignment. Lage: Then you'd look at it to see where the needs were. Kendrick: Usually the notice of retirement arrives at about the same time as a justification for reassigning that position exactly back to where it came from. That's usually initiated by the department where the vacancy will occur. Well, the Day committee, in studying the existing assignment of resources among the eight or nine broad program areas, recommended some modest reallocations of these position assignments in order to strengthen our program in subject matter areas that were emerging as important issues for agriculture research. But when it came to talking about whether they would come out of forestry or whether they would come out of plant pathology, or whether they would come from Berkeley or Davis or Riverside, then the peace and harmony of that committee vanished. About the best they could do was talk about general reallocations without becoming very specific. It was left to those of us in the administration of the system to identify the specifics and try to implement the changes. Centrifugal Forces on the Cooperative Extensi o n Planning Proce s s Kendrick: Well, the Day committee activity did produce a document that was useful. It identified trends and paid attention to the rising concern about environmental quality, suggested that we really didn't need to place additional resources in production kinds of activities, but its principal deficiency was that it did not link extension into the plans. Extension participated on the 286 Kendrick: committee, but George Alcorn and his staff functioned mostly as observers and did not really lay out what they proposed to do in terms of integrating their plans with those for the experiment station. All was not lost, however, by extension's passive participation on the committee, because it created an awareness within extension of where the research program was going. This awareness, in due course, was reflected in their own "Plan of Work" reports to Washington by describing extension's intentions to strengthen their programs in the same areas that the experiment station had indicated were to be strengthened. The awareness also was reflected in extension's proposed allocation of vacated positions. The difficulty in making reallocations in Cooperative Extension is that the counties became just as possessive about positions as departments as the University did. As agriculture in counties changes, as it did in Los Angeles County in the 1960s and '70s, you have to change a whole office so that you have a different kind of program. But those counties are not anxious to lose positions to other counties where agricultural activities may be increasing. Specifically, I found some problems in allocating positions for livestock advisors. Each county that had some livestock activity wanted a livestock advisor. In my judgment, it's not necessary to have a livestock advisor in every county, because the smaller counties, in particular, could share this advisor with each other. But there were administrative difficulties with these shared arrangements. The travel and other support for a livestock advisor in County A was provided in County A's budget. And County A wasn't thrilled with providing support for the livestock advisor in County A to work part time in County B. So we had to negotiate with County B to provide funding support for County A's livestock advisor when working in County B. Lage: Did these monies come from the state, though? Kendrick: Those support funds were county funds, allocated from county budgets. One can understand that counties must have control of their own tax monies, but it creates a difficulty in trying to run a statewide program, in terms of efficient use of resources. What it does is force, or at least push, towards inefficient use of resources. Lage: They're competing with each other. Kendrick: There are inefficiencies that develop from local jurisdictions for regionally needed services. 287 Combining the Directorship of the Agricultural Experiment Station With the Vice Presidency, 1973 Kendrick: I guess what I'm illustrating is that there are a number of obstacles to overcome in trying to design and administer a system that will force the coordination and common planning of a program that reflects the Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources as a whole, rather than just one of its parts, the Agricultural Experiment Station or Cooperative Extension. Lage : When did you put yourself in as director? Kendrick: Not yet. That comes a little later. I'm trying to put a date on the time that some of these changes were being made. Kelly retired from the directorship, I think about February of 1972. That meant I had to do something about either appointing a successor or getting a different administrative arrangement. Boysie Day had been brought to Berkeley with the expectation that he would succeed Kelly as the director of the experiment station. Since he had the experience of chairing the planning committee and laying out the future agenda for the experiment station, he seemed to be a natural to take on the responsibilities of the director. During the course of chairing that committee, however, he disenchanted himself with the deans and chancellor's office representatives, and when it became necessary to make the change, he was viewed less enthusiastically as the successor to Kelly than he was earlier on. I sensed that, and in fact had some concern of my own about asking him to be the director and I shared those concerns with him. Boysie assured me that he could overcome the eroded support, and that he would be bitterly disappointed if he didn't become the director. This exchange took place in the fall of 1971. So with some reluctance, I went ahead and appointed him director of the experiment station. In the meantime, George Alcorn was still functioning as director of Cooperative Extension. My first attempt to strengthen the coordination of programs between the experiment station and Cooperative Extension occurred when I also asked Boysie to become the associate director of Cooperative Extension for research. George Alcorn approved of that, and Boysie did function to some extent in that role. That was the first administrative linkage of any joint appointment between extension and the experiment station. What I wanted to accomplish by this administrative arrangement was to have one administrator who would be responsible for research planning and resource allocation for both Cooperative Extension and the experiment station. 288 Kendrick: It really didn't work to the extent that I thought it should because I don't think Boysie was ever really fully accepted by Cooperative Extension as being a significant administrator who controlled the fate of individuals in extension. The most influential administrators in Cooperative Extension, as I'm sure exists in most organizations, are those who influence or control the advancements and salaries of the individual employees. Other administrators such as planning officers are often listened to only when what they have to say agrees with what the audience wants to hear. Administrators who function as support staff but who don't have line authority are only as effective in bringing about change as they are able to convince the line officers of the need to make changes. Boysie did not have any line authority in extension, so that administrative arrangement didn't work out, but it was an attempt. The next change came about in 1973, when it appeared that the directorship of the experiment station under Boysie was really going in a direction that 1 felt was departing from cooperative activities, and I was getting more static from the campus administrators about that happening. So in July of "73 I decided to bite the bullet and become the director of the experiment station in addition to the vice president. For all of the reasons I've mentioned earlier: I wanted to establish direct communication with the USDA and be recognized as the local administrative officer with responsibility for the experiment station. That was the first time the University of California adopted this type of administrative organization. Now, it wasn't all that unique, as I've indicated, for many other states had the same individual acting as dean and director. The change created some concern among the external constituency, because they didn't fully understand what was going on in the administration of the division and the experiment station — Lage : When you say external constituency, who do you mean? Kendrick: I'm talking about the people like the editor of California Farmer, and the Agricultural Council of California, and Council of California Growers, and the commodity organizations of agriculture. They were not quite sure that I was doing the right thing because Boysie had a great supportive following with that constituency. Some felt that I had ulterior motives involved in making that change, and therefore it wasn't perceived to be in the best interests of agriculture. Well, I had motives, all right. They were not ulterior, but in my mind, they were there because I wanted to bring about a closer coordination with both national and the state programs. 289 Lage: Did you see it also as a way to make more programmatic changes in the experiment station? Kendrick: No, I'm not sure that that was foremost in my mind. I was more concerned about being on the outside of things as the vice president, and not intimately involved in planning and directing. It's awfully easy for directors to become possessive and protective of their own unit. Under Boysie Day's administration, I saw that happening in the experiment station to the extent that I didn't think it would be good for the overall program of the division. f* Well, about this same time, Russ McGregor wore out his welcome among my other administrative staff, particularly those who were campus-based. He was a little tenacious and insistent in assembling information and analyzing budgets, and his experience as a federal officer, I think, discredited him with my colleagues on the campuses. I continued to value his assistance in spite of the criticism, however. But it was Russ's initiative when he decided that he would like to move into another responsibi lity. I believe I brought his attention to an opportunity to move to the National Association of State Universities and Land Grant Colleges as the agricultural officer. There was some restruc turing going on in that organization which I had had a hand in during the period of my national activities. Russ expressed interest in being that agricultural officer, so he applied and was ultimately selected. He decided that was an opportunity too great for him to pass up. So in 1974 he went to that position. That left me a little thin as far as administrative support was concerned. I was aware of the fact that Loy Sammet of the Berkeley campus was within two years of retirement. He had been in the Chancellor's Office as the vice chancellor for research, and he was returning to the College of Natural Resources and was helping out in the dean's office at that time. In fact, he may have been the acting dean for an interim period. But he had planned to go back to his department and do some teaching and research. I figured his experience was what I needed so I decided to interest him in becoming my assistant. And after reflecting upon it, and in spite of feeling that he would be moving away from the University into the isolation of systemwide administration, he did accept. He came with me on the 30th of June, 197A, as my special assistant and associate director of the experiment station, and essentially picked up from where Russ had left that position. He, of course, had a very different personality than Russ possessed. And since Loy had been a member of the faculty at the University, he didn't have to overcome the onus of being a "foreigner" as far as the University's faculty was concerned. It's very difficult for an outsider, someone from 290 Kendrick: another institution or even another organization, to fill a significant administrative office and begin to operate with full acceptance. We are a closed society, in spite of the fact that the universities were supposed to be citadels of liberalism, openness, and objectivity. They're not in matters concerning their faculty's individual lives and welfare. They're about as conservative as you can describe. I was director of the experiment station with Loy Sammet's help from 1974 to 1976. when Loy had to retire at the age of 68 — it was October 30 of 1976 when he retired. Subsequently I asked Harold Heady to join my organization, and he took up where Loy left off when he retired in October of '76. Harold was with me from 1976 to 1980. (Harold was one of several people who were recommended for consideration for this appointment by a screening committee I had appointed for that purpose.) Lage: Were they with you as assistants in the experiment station, or in the overall division? Kendrick: They had overall responsibilities. Loy was made an associate director of the Agricultural Experiment Station, but not Cooperative Extension, and special assistant to me. When Harold Heady, who was in the Department of Forestry and Conservation at Berkeley, was identified as a candidate for this responsibility, I made Harold an assistant vice president. I also made him an associate director of the experiment station. I gave him the title of associate director of the experiment station with the understanding that I was the administrative director. Assuming the Directorship of Cooperative Extension, 1975 Kendrick: The next opportunity for change presented itself when George Alcorn reached the age of 65 in 1975. We mutually agreed that that was an appropriate time for him to retire as director of Cooperative Extension, and I thought it would be a propitious time to combine the directorship of Cooperative Extension also with the office of the vice president. That took a little mere politicking to bring about than combining the directorship of the experiment station with the vice presidency because the director of Cooperative Extension deals more directly with its external constituency. Cooperative Extension also has the county-based personnel. Well, there was, I would guess, a cautious agreement within Cooperative Extension to the new administrative arrangement. So by 1975, mid-year, I had become the director of Cooperative Extension and I continued to hold the titles of director of the Agricultural Experiment Station, and the vice president of the division. 291 Lage: That sounds like a prodigious amount of responsibility and outreach and — Kendrick: Well, on the face of it, it was. And somewhat of an impossible operational task because one couldn't be director of Cooperative Extension and hold the other responsibilities and do everything the previous director had done. That proved to be a major problem with the reorganization because Cooperative Extension felt they'd lost a full-time director. They didn't really believe that someone could take on all those responsibilities and give them the same kind of attention they had had previously. In my mind, I had planned to ask Jerry Siebert, who was one of two associate directors of Cooperative Extension at the time, to be the operating director, with the title of associate director. This was similar to administrative arrangements for Cooperative Extension in a number of other states. Jerry proceeded to fulfil that role by becoming the day-to-day, operating director. But that really wasn't the same as having the director in that role because we didn't have the tradition of an associate director having that much authority. As associate director Jerry also felt that his hands were somewhat tied because I was the official director. The ex-officio membership on the California Farm Bureau Federation's board of directors was designed for the director of Cooperative Extension rather than this relatively newly created associate directorship of Cooperative Extension. So I became an ex-officio member of that board of directors. It provided another avenue for linkage of the activities of the University vice president with a broader constituency of farmers in California. Explaining the Division to Farm Bureau Members Kendrick: I felt that was a good association because, up until that time, the Farm Bureau saw the University primarily only through Cooperative Extension's eyes. It didn't at all times understand the relationship between research and extension, or what some of the constraints were about devoting attention to what they perceived to be problems, but which may really not have been appropriate for the University to take on. And they didn't — they being farmers, through their Farm Bureau organization — didn't think well of the fact that they weren't seeing as many experiment station people addressing their local needs as they once had. To them, Cooperative Extension seemed to be the only organization that was concerned about their problems. Well, I was really placed in a position on the board of directors where I could explain that that was a natural evolution of the University's agriculture program; that the experiment station 292 Kendrick: personnel were necessarily moving in the direction of addressing broader issues with wider applications than just the local problem areas, and we expected our Cooperative Extension people to fill that gap. I explained that we were staffing Cooperative Extension in a manner that would allow us to address those local problems. So it was not unusual to find that Cooperative Extension personnel were the ones giving attention to local research problems, in contrast to Experiment Station personnel, because we were designing the system to do precisely that. Well, I think it was important that my relationship at that point was such that I was wearing all those hats and could try to explain the evolving staffing patterns and the evolving expectations of activities of our division personnel. Lage: Did the Farm Bureau come to accept your explanation? Kendrick: I think the people whom I served with at that time did. One thing I was never able to explain — even though I tried many times, was extension's name change. In their constitution, they continually referred to Cooperative Extension as Agricultural Extension. A few old-time members in the organization were not sympathetic with my point of view. I proposed the name change to Cooperative Extension in order to indicate the nature of its funding and the fact that its program included more than just agriculture extension — we had people in urban settings doing work that was not agriculture. Our nutritional experts were dealing with food and nutrition; they weren't dealing with agriculture in the traditional sense. I made several attempts to try and update their constitution and bylaws to change the name to Cooperative Extension where these documents referred to Agricultural Extension. Every time that proposal would come to a vote at one of their annual meetings, an impassioned plea would arise from some of the San Joaquin Valley Farm Bureau units saying they didn't care what we (the University) called it, they wanted it to continue as Agricultural Extension because that was the way it started out. They did not want to lose that term "agriculture," from the title, so I decided there were other issues I could more profitably spend my time on than trying to lobby through a name change. They could call it what they wanted to, but officially it was still Cooperative Extension in the eyes of the University and the United States Department of Agriculture. That presented somewhat of a problem to our local offices because some of the constituencies whom they were working with in the local settings looked with scorn upon seeing the name change on signs at the county offices. I said, "Well, don't fight it, if they are happy with the old sign, leave it Agricultural Extension." It was just a manifestation of the difficulty of people accepting a change in the status quo. 293 XIV PERSONNEL PROBLEMS IN COOPERATIVE EXTENSION New Programs, New Clientele, New Personnel Kendrick: Well, that was an interesting era of coordination. I'm not sure that I could give you any concrete example of improved coordination. At least I thought, as the chief administrative officer for both programs, that I was more in tune with the total program and was able to evaluate with greater confidence the pressures which accompanied requests for resource allocation. I think as director of Cooperative Extension, I had a little more leverage in making some adjustments within Cooperative Extension than I would have had as just the vice president. The introduction of self-governance with the Cooperative Extension Assembly, peer-group evaluation of their individual accomplishments in relation to their advancement, and advances made in the whole civil rights area to broaden the opportunities for employment of women and minorities all came about in that period. I think that Jerry and I, as a team, were able to bring about those things perhaps faster than would have been possible without our leadership and commitment to those goals. There is no way to know whether that is true or not, but at least it happened that way, so I'll take what credit there is. There was also a lot of tension during that period. The tension was pretty well focused in Cooperative Extension and centered to a large extent on the actions that involved personnel. Once Cooperative Extension broadened its agenda and took on the responsibilities for nutrition education for rural and, to some extent, urban poor, began promoting AH for urban disadvantaged youth, and developed programs for limited resource farmers, and migrant farm workers, then some of the people problems began to emerge. When Cooperative Extension was directing its activities to the traditional agricultural community, there was a homogeneity of activity and a homogeneity of the people with whom they were working. When Cooperative Extension widened its targeted 294 Kendrick: audiences to include groups not traditionally served by the agricultural programs, such as migrant farm workers, rural and urban poor, limited resource farmers, and urban gardeners, the organization was faced with a lot of demands to which they were unaccustomed and inexperienced in handling. There were also deficient levels of education and of understanding of the intricacies of institutional program obligations among these new clientele groups. Lage : You're talking about people you worked with, not the personnel that you hired. Kendrick: I'm talking about the clientele and to some extent the people we hired especially for these new programs, who were less than full- time staff. Even some of the full-time staff whom we hired to work with these new clientele groups were individuals with backgrounds vastly different than our agricultural specialists and advisors. So we broke up the previous homogeneity of the employed personnel of Cooperative Extension and we no longer had a homogeneity reflected in the clients with whom we were working. That was not all bad, but it required designing an organization to meet the contemporary makeup of the total society, rather than only relating to the traditional male-dominated agricultural enterprises that characterized the clientele and program of Cooperative Extension up until about the early seventies. Almost from the start of these new programs we had problems dealing with some of the concerns expressed by, particularly, the Hispanic group. I was never able to understand fully the reasons for this, but I think California's farm labor problems had created an environment of suspicion that organized agriculture was not in sympathy with Hispanics as a class of people and this carried over to a series of accusations that Cooperative Extension was discriminating and biased against Hispanics, and that its managers, including the vice president and the associate director, were insensitive to the needs of the minorities and inept at handling their particular needs. Lage: Kendrick: This was not your personnel, but your clientele still? I' n having trouble separating that out. personnel problems. Because I know there were I guess what I'm describing is more or less the personnel of Cooperative Extension. It's a little difficult to separate out the concerns of the clientele, because some of their concerns were about our employed personnel. And one of the reasons I'm having a little difficulty separating client and employee concern is because the nutritional education program was designed to employ from among the clientele, individuals to work with the program half-time, or not more than half-time. They became employees of the University, but they were really from the 295 Kendrick: clientele whom we were working with. They provided the link between the regular staff in nutrition and family and consumer sciences and the people whom we were trying to reach to improve their understanding of good food habits and good food purchases and how to manage efficiently their food stamps and the like. Those employees were called nutrition aides, and by and large, they represented minority females, both Hispanics and blacks. Inadequate Funding. Staff Reductions, and Charges of Discrimination Kendrick: The difficulty of funding that program adequately didn't manifest itself initially. However, since the whole program was supported by a federal appropriation and mandated by the USDA's Extension Service Agency, we were obliged to operate the program within the federal funds available for it, and under the rules and regulations they set forth for the program. Lage: Did they also mandate choosing your aides from the clientele? Kendrick: Yes. That was designed in the project. It was to be a one-on- one experience. A major deficiency of the program was the lack of a regular mechanism to increase the funding to match the inevitable increased cost due to salary increases, price increases, etc. We had too much money initially because we didn't have a fully- em ployed staff early enough to use all the money, and then when we hired enough people to keep the program rolling we had to begin cutting back in personnel because the appropriations were not adequate enough to cover the increased costs of the existing programs. Therefore, in order to meet increasing costs, we had to cut back the program, which meant we had to reduce the staff, and that resulted in some separations of minorities. They generally didn't understand why they were separated at the expense of keeping on some longer-term employees, who were regular employees and who by and large were white females or white males. Lage: But these longer-term employees had career positions? Kendrick: That's correct. They did have career positions. But in the eyes of the new part-time staff, this was a discriminatory act. There were also individual cases where personnel actions and work assignments were unhappy events, and grievances were filed. In those early days, we didn't have a real well-defined affirmative action policy. Affirmative action wasn't new, and we were making, I thought, considerable progress in trying to broaden the base of our employment work force. But there were a lot of 296 Ken d rick : Lage: Kendrick: operational details that were unstated, that weren't written, weren't codified, and since a lot of people were involved in administering personnel affairs all the way up and down the system, there were often glitches — well, not often, but there were glitches in the system. Poor judgments exercised, and some vindictiveness I think probably came to the foreground. These personnel irregularities resulted in complaints from both the organized structures of Cooperative Extension through their extension assembly and from individuals. President Saxon and several of the Regents and some of the legislators got long letters of complaints. In responding to their constituents, the legislators would redirect their letters of complaints to the President, who would redirect them to me. Ultimately, I agreed with David Saxon that an impartial committee should be appointed to review the allegations of discrimination and to separate reality from fantasy. That committee was put together by Vice President Archie Kleingartner, and he asked Walter Strong to chair it, thus it became known as the Strong Committee. That committee spent about a year delving into all aspects of the alleged discrimination. What kind of people were on the committee? faculty, or — ? Would they have been They were faculty, and some non-agricultural administrators. I don't recall the particular membership; I remember Herman Spieth, the former Chancellor of the Riverside campus was a member, and Sho Sato from Boalt Law School at Berkeley was a member. Even though it was a committee report, I believe that the staff and the chairman had the major influence on its contents. The Cooperative Extension Assembly for Career Employees Lage: You mentioned an assembly within cooperative extension. Was this your effort to put a counterpart of the Academic Senate into Cooperative Extension? Kendrick: Yes, it was. All the elements of an Academic Senate organization didn't fit the needs of Cooperative Extension, but there were some activities that did lend themselves to patterning after the Academic Senate organization. The most important one that I felt needed to be implemented involved personnel evaluation with a centralized personnel committee. And we also introduced the ad hoc peer review system into the personnel evaluation process. Lage: Would this represent those non-career people also? 297 Kendrick: No, the non-career people were outside of that structure. The ladder staff within Cooperative Extension made up the membership of the Cooperative Extension Assembly. The extension assembly had a welfare committee; it had the academic personnel committee; and it had a number of committees which the extension organization deemed were important for the effective operation of their academic organization. The formation of the assembly was really an effort to get the academic staff of extension more involved in advising on actions that affected their operations and their destiny. It was somewhat new in their experience, because prior to the formation of the assembly all committees in extension were administratively appointed. It took a while for this new organization to take hold in a significant way. I think it's been good for Cooperative Extension because it has given the academic staff members an organized means of expressing themselves. Up to that time, Cooperative Extension was organized administratively by employment groups so there was a specialists' committee, a home advisors' committee, a AH advisors' committee, a farm advisors' committee, and a county directors' committee. When I became the director, I told the assembly leadership, "You can keep those committees if you want to, but I'm not going to appoint them. I'm going to communicate with Cooperative Extension through the structure and administration of the extension assembly. You can organize your extension assembly in any manner you want to, to get a basis for expression of opinion." But I felt that it would be counterproductive to have these special administrative committees which could dilute the power of the extension assembly. So that changed that particular relationship to the director of Cooperative Extension. I also felt that the county directors had too much power. They had an administrative route to express themselves because they were part of the administration, and then they were organized as a committee of county directors in the extension assembly. I said it just doesn't make sense to provide them twc avenues to the administration; they already were a part of the administrative structure, and therefore, I was not .going to create a committee of county directors, because I wanted to relate to them through the line authorities of the administration of Cooperative Extension. Well, I think it was understood in due course that that view was at least logical. Whether or not it was fully accepted in all circles, I'll never know. But at least there was no committee of county directors under my directorship. Lage: I didn't mean to divert you from personnel, but I wanted to see how the new type of employees fit into the personnel structure, and what were their means for redressing grievances. 298 Kendrick: Well, administratively, we began to pay more attention to the personnel administration in Cooperative Extension. Up until that time, personnel affairs were handled by an associate director who had more assigned duties than just personnel responsibilities. In fact. Jerry Siebert was the associate director under George Alcorn who handled personnel affairs and administrative support services. But during the period when I held the title of director of Cooperative Extension, I established an Office of Personnel Management and had an officer assigned with the sole responsibility for personnel matters. The person operating in that role was Ken England. Bringing Ken into my administration was the first step to develop and to codify policies and procedures involving all kinds of personnel actions such as recruitment, performance evaluations, salary and promotion actions, administrative hearings, grievance hearings, and affirmative action activities. What was produced was still in an evolutionary stage, and a long way from a finished product. We also had pressure from the USDA to get our house in order relative to affirmative action grievance procedures because since we were supported in part with federal funds, we were required to abide by the federal regulations and policies in these matters. We faced the loss of our federal funds if we did not comply with their policies. Strong Committee and Kleingartner Evaluations of Accusations against Extension Kendrick: Well, the Strong Committee issued its report, and to my surprise, the committee, which I felt was going to be fair and objective, was not fair and objective from my point of view. It dwelt on the few problems and didn't give any credit whatsoever to the progress that had been made in the civil rights goals. By dwelling on the five or six cases that were not handled in the most appropriate or fair manner, the committee condemned the total program as being mismanaged and sloppy. They didn't accuse either Jerry or me of conspiracy to discriminate, but the accusation of ineptness was certainly apparent. That condemnation was received with a certain amount of sympathy by a few members of the Board of Regents, who perceived that Cooperative Extension was an agricultural organization that was really anti-labor, ant i- His panic, and anti-small farmer. It was difficult to try to counteract that perception and prejudice. Loy Sammet, Harold Heady, Jerry Siebert, and Jim Kendrick spent a lot of time providing reports and rebuttals to the Strong Committee report. The report was also evaluated by Vice President Archie Kleingartner. He didn't accept the report 299 Kendrick: fully, but he did conclude that there were some sloppy procedures that gave the appearance of discrimination. He also suggested that changes in the administrative structure of the division were desirable because the combination of the directorship of Cooperative Extension and the vice presidency placed too much responsibility with one person. He said also that he felt that the vice president needed to separate himself more completely from the operational responsibility of the organization. I, with Jerry Siebert and others' help, issued a countering report, pointing out the deficiencies of the assumptions made by the Strong Committee and identifying activities that directly contradicted some of the accusations of discrimination. The problem with the Strong Committee was that it really listened only to the complaintants of the system and didn't pay any attention to the positive accomplishments. I think it generally was pretty well biased and showed no real understanding of Cooperative Extension's programmatic goals or operational style. Well, President Saxon, generally, backed me and my view, and even Archie Kleingartner had some reservations about all of the Strong Committee's findings and recommendations. The liberal Regents led by Vilma Martinez continued to accept it at face value, and demanded corrective action. So it had its impact. It's still perceived by some people to represent a course of action for Cooperative Extension. But it was not fully accepted by the administration as a clear, objective review and a blueprint for immediate action and attention. With my colleague Archie Kleingartner suggesting some administrative reorganization, also with a certain amount of urging from the external community, who never fully accepted the fact that it was a good idea to combine the director of Cooperative Extension with the vice presidency, and with a certain amount of urging from the established staff of Cooperative Extension that we return to the full-time directorship of Cooperative Extension, pressure was mounting for a change. The stand-alone directorship was remembered as a happy arrangement during the Crocheron years, where Cooperative Extension was a considerable force in its operations in rural California, and this satisfaction continued under George Alcorn, who brought a different kind of a leadership to the organization. Nevertheless, under this type of leadership, I felt that Cooperative Extension operated to a large extent on its own mandates and dictates. Lage : I don't see how returning to the former administrative structure would solve these personnel problems. Kendrick: The external community wasn't really concerned about that. 300 Lage: So you had two different forces coming up with the same solution. Kendrick: Two forces wanted separation, but for different reasons. The external community felt that they would get more direct attention; the director would show up at more meetings. There was never any pressure to make a change from the USDA; they were happy — at least, they didn't express themselves with being unhappy with the arrangement. The pressures came from the external clientele, who perceived that they were shortchanged by not having a full-time director, and internally, from those who felt that the vice president had too many responsibilities to pay close attention to the personnel administration and to their many other needs. Lage: Did you not agree with that second point of view? Kendrick: I didn't necessarily agree with it because I thought that they just didn't understand the role and function of the office of personnel administration and the delegation of responsibilities. The critics wanted the director to be involved in every day-to day activity. Perhaps it was people who were operating with the office of personnel administration who were at fault, but not necessarily the organizational structure. Another Administrative Reorganization; Siebert as Directors Lowell Lewis and Jerry Kendrick: But it became apparent that I had to make some sort of visible change. This was all occurring in 1980, 1981. I also decided that if I were going to make a change in Cooperative Extension, that I needed to make a similar change in the experiment station at the same time. I had to make a change in 1980 because Harold Heady had decided that he didn't want to continue as the assistant vice president. We had become a little estranged; I don't think Harold was very comfortable in putting up with all the noise and accusations that we were receiving, but — Lage: But that wasn't so much on his side of it. at the experiment station, was it? Kendrick: No. he wasn't in the direct line to receive it personally, but it was an environment that involved the whole office and he was involved as my chief staff aid in generating a lot of the supporting evidence to counter the allegations. But Jerry Siebert really caught most of the action because the criticism was directed towards Cooperative Extension. 301 Kendrick: So when Harold stepped aside as the assistant vice president in June 1980, I asked Loy Sammet to come back for another six months and become the acting director of the experiment station and acting assistant vice president. At that time, I was persuaded that Jerry Siebert probably ought to continue as the director of Cooperative Extension, but that decision was premature as far as President Saxon and my critical Regents were concerned. They wanted to see how Jerry and I would respond to some of the recommendations of the Strong Committee before agreeing with that appointment. I initiated a search committee for an assistant vice president and director of the experiment station. That committee identified as one of the candidates Lowell Lewis, the associate dean for research at Riverside. Lowell accepted my invitation to join my staff as the assistant vice president and director of the Agricultural Experiment Station. Lage : That would have been about '81? Kendrick: I think it was in January or February of '81. At the same time, in order to set up a parallel administrative structure, I asked Jerry if he would be the director of Cooperative Extension and assistant vice president for Cooperative Extension. Lage: That turned out to be controversial. Kendrick: That turned out to be controversial because my critics thought that I should have conducted the same kind of open search for that officer that I did for the experiment station director and the assistant vice president. I had more responsibility in mind for that assistant vice presidency than just being concerned with the experiment station; that particular position was to be my chief deputy. Lowell Lewis's assistant vice president's title indicated he was the assistant vice president for the Division of Agriculture and University Services. I wanted it that way so that that office would have responsibility for programs in extension as well as the experiment station — in other words, function as my chief deputy with full authority to act for me in my absense. Lage: So then, again, you'd have some overlap administratively between extension and the experiment station. Kendrick: Yes. And I regarded the move of the associate director of Cooperative Extension to the director of Cooperative Extension as more of an administrative rearrangement, rather than creating a new position. Granting Jerry the title of assistant vice president was merely recognition of the complexity of the administrative responsibility vis-a-vis other assistant vice presidents in the Office of the President. So the position was limited to Cooperative Extension administration and titled assistant vice presidenct for Cooperative Extension. 302 Kendrick: So I felt the circumstances didn't call for a search for a new position, but people who differed with my interpretation felt that I should have thrown Jerry out and conducted an open search for candidates for the position. They felt Jerry should apply for the position if he were interested in it. Well, the President agreed that it really represented more of a reassignment of existing responsibilities rather than a new position, so my recommendation prevailed, even though it was not accepted by some of the critics. No Conspiracy to Discriminate but Some Unclear Policies and Procedures Lage: Did the critics of these personnel policies perceive that the problems were insensitivities of some of the long-term employees to minorities, or did they see it as sort of a conspiracy that went right through the whole administrative structure? Kendrick: Well, we had one particular individual who has become notorious in challenging the administration. He has made a career out of allegations of administrative irregularities and has focused on personnel actions which have resulted in unhappiness of the employee involved as a means of directing criticism towards whomever happens to be in the adminstrative line and, in particular, against Jerry Siebert and, to a large extent, me. Lage: Was this one of the employees? Kendrick: Yes. Former employee. I think this sort of dedication towards making every personnel action that results in some degree of employee unhappiness a case for grievance is a reflection of that person's vindictiveness rather than a sincere regard for the individuals he purported to represent. My experience in administration is that that's not unique; it happens in many of our units where a former disgruntled employee creates a lot of trouble for former associates or administrators, because the University is such an open society and pays attention to individual rights. It is also a public institution governed by public policy laws, making it especially vulnerable to frivolous allegations because of the attention these allegations of wrongdoing receive in the news media. Another fact is that these kinds of cases represent a small minority of the total work force, but they require an enormous amount of time to resolve them. There's no question in my mind that the alleged insensitivity, mismanagement, and personnel discrimination that have been raised by some minority and nonminority employees in 303 Kendrick: Cooperative Extension were merely expressions of disagreement with administrative decisions by disgruntled employees, and this individual, in particular, has made himself a representative of these disgruntled employees. The disgruntlements may arise from not getting a promotion, or having a critical performance review, or being reassigned to a different location, or being discharged for poor performance, or because the budget was running out of money, or almost anything. A whole array of personnel actions that have taken place, resulting in less than full acceptance by the individual affected, has been taken on by this person who wants to produce so much turmoil that administrators involved in his own unhappiness will be discharged. Lage: So this one individual, who has remained nameless so far, actually served as a representative for a number of people, not just himself? Kendrick: Yes. He does not just sympathize with them; he serves them and expects to be paid for his services. Lage: Is he a lawyer? Kendrick: He went to law school on our time. Lage: Is this the fellow whose name appears in the material you gave me? Kendrick: He is Robert Bradf ield, who was a former nutritional specialist in Cooperative Extension. Lage: Is he a minority himself? Kendrick: No. While employed by Cooperative Extension, unbeknownst to us, he was a full-time student at Boalt Law School, getting his J.D. degree. He's never been admitted to the Bar, to my knowledge. However, because of his knowledge of the law, he is able to use the legal system to make time-consuming demands, and he has pretty well tied some offices up from time to time. Lage: Does this still happen — is it an ongoing process? Kendrick: I believe it is. He retired on a disability in the early seventies, but he himself was the subject of a case of alleged discrimination and a grievance hearing. It was initially resolved when he decided to accept a disability retirement and drop all of his charges. We thought that would be the end of it, but it proved only to be a recess in his attacks on our administration. Lage: Did you satisfy yourself that the personnel actions overall were being handled in a fair way? 304 Kendrick: To the extent that I investigated them, I found some of the practices and some of the decisions to be prejudicial, and I set about correcting them. Bear in mind that this was in the early eighties and late seventies, when all of the campuses were subjected to criticisms for not having plans of aggressive affirmative actions in place, and not having well-codified personnel procedures. II Except for the agricultural programs, the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, later known as the Department of Health and Human Services, had jurisdiction for administering the Civil Rights Act at institutions which received federal funds. So our University campuses were also involved with some allegations of discrimination and inattention to the Civil Fights Act. So Cooperative Extension was a part of this whole environment. The USDA, which was the federal agency that enforced the Civil Rights Act for Cooperative Extension and the Agricultural Experiment Station, launched a number of investigations to follow up some of these allegations. None of the USDA investigations substantiated any of the discrimination charges. As a matter of fact, all of those investigations pretty well vindicated what we were saying all along — that we had certain deficiencies but they were not conspiratorial. We needed to adjust our administrative procedures a little, and the policies needed to be more clearly stated, but by and large there was no major fault to be found with what was being done. Lage : It seems to me from what you've described as the traditional extension employee concerned with the rural farmer, and then bringing in this new group of minority, urban employees, that just by human nature you were going to have a lot of cross- cultural problems, that must have been reflected in personnel problems. Maybe I'm reading too much into it. Kendrick: No, you've identified exactly what I really was trying to indicate earlier, that as long as Cooperative Extension was an agricultural extension service dealing with a nearly homogeneous set of farmers who were concerned mostly with producing more food and fiber and domestic animals, extension had a single, simplified focus of its activities. Agricultural Extension was staffed to satisfy that kind of need. When it broadened its agenda to include the unserved people — minorities, urban poor — Lage: Agricultural labor. 305 Kendrick: Labor — then it moved into an arena where it was almost certain to produce differences of opinion and unhappiness. We didn't change our internal staffing pattern rapidly enough to accommodate to that different kind of environmental exposure. When we did, we added employees with a broadened viewpoint who were not necessarily fully accepted by the traditional agriculturally oriented Cooperative Extension people. With that change in the employment pattern of Cooperative Extension — plus the post- Vietnam and Watergate period expressed by the slogan "question authority" and new legislation designed to extend individual rights such as the Privacy Act and the Public Information Act — employees seemed to assume that the administration was up to no good. The general attitude of these newer employees seemed to be that there was a flawed administration rather than accepting the fact that maybe they weren't performing in a manner that was acceptable, or their efficiency was low, or they were malingering on the job, or for any number of reasons they were failing to make progress in the organization. The common course of action was to initiate grievance procedures. Some resulted in court cases, although not very many of them went that far; but the threat of going to court was always there. All of this, aggravated by Robert Bradf ield, resulted in a continuous contest between unhappy personnel and the administration. So that tension existed, and while it became time-consuming and very frustrating because we seemed unable to resolve it at any one particular time, it did not dominate our activities to the extent that it did in the late 1970s and the early eighties. Continued Tension between an Integrated Program and Separatist Tendencies Kendrick: That, I guess, brings us to about 1981 and the administrative structure that existed for the rest of my administration. I had two assistant vice presidents, one of whom was the director of Cooperative Extension and the other was director of the experiment station. The personnel office was not disbanded, but its reporting route to me was changed and given to the assistant vice president for Cooperative Extension. I also created a director of administrative service who reported to me, and Warren Schoonover served in that role. Lage: So one personnel office for the division as a whole? Kendrick: Yes. There was a little difficulty in identifying that office as the division's personnel office, because it was so dominated by actions involving Cooperative Extension personnel. Nancy 306 Kendrick: McLaughlin was the personnel affairs officer with the additional title of associate director of Cooperative Extension for administration. She came to Cooperative Extension from Angus Taylor's office. Angus was the assistant vice president for academic personnel before he went to Santa Cruz as the chancellor of that campus. She brought to Cooperative Extension a great deal of experience and knowledge in handling academic personnel, and I was quite pleased to have her join us. Jerry also appointed an associate director of Cooperative Extension for programs, and that person was Jim Meyers. The organization functioned reasonably well, at first participating in developing coordinated plans and budgets. But later Cooperative Extension began to drift. At the end of my adminstration, I could see that something needed to be done to bring it back to a division participant again. I think the nature of separate directorships, particularly in Cooperative Extension, is such that the gravitational pull for autonomy is so strong that some major restructuring and major reorganization needs to be done to keep it functioning as a part of the division rather than an independent affiliate. Lage: And the pull is from the counties and the external constituency? Kendrick: Well, it's at least those two, and it's also from the USDA itself. In my judgment, a serious deficiency exists in the USDA, even though there is now an assistant secretary for science and education, kind of a parallel structure with the one we have at the University of California. Our vice president has overall responsibility, and the USDA has an assistant secretary with overall responsibility for research and extension. But that's about as far as it goes. There is no real mechanism for forcing common planning and common budgets. The research appropriations for agricultural experiment stations and the extension appropriations for Cooperative Extension are based on two different legislative authorities, the Hatch and Smith-Lever Acts respectively. The USDA also has the Agricultural Research Service, which is the agency's internal agricultural research organization, with an internal staff of agricultural research people, and with facilities to manage and operate. The assistant secretary is responsible for all three agencies, but there is scant evidence that he is able to get them together to plan along common goals for their budgets. The structure of the government is such that it prevents close coordination and a unified budget. I'm sure that the leadership of these agencies are aware of the major issues facing agriculture in the United States and they design their respective programs and budgets to address them. However, there is no evidence that the programs of USDA's Cooperative State Research Service, the Agricultural Research Service and the Extension Service are complementary or are 307 Kendrick: coordinated in any way. I think you've got to force cooperation and the only way to force cooperation, in my judgment, is to have a common budget. Well, Ken Farrell, my successor, will need to deal with this tendency of Cooperative Extension to plan separately from the experiment station and to function as a completely self-contained unit. There's a concern among Cooperative Extension that they would lose their identity if they become too integrated into the division's operations. They perceive a value in that separation, and there is value in having a separate identification. In my judgment, however, it can be identified easily as a separate function, but it's got to have a common program objective with the division. As extension becomes more and more involved with research on local problems, and adapting for practical use generalized information developed by the research faculty, it's more essential than ever before, that extension be a part of a unified program. When a program is designed with both research and extension components, it is much easier to justify the budget to support it than it is if we seek separate experiment station and extension appropriations. When we had the integrated pest management appropriation, there were extension activities within that program. The most recent appropriation to support the program in sustainable agriculture has both research and extension components. Our request to the legislature was to support a program, not to augment the experiment station or Cooperative Extension. Both research and extension activities were involved, but the money was appropriated as a lump sum and administered by the division. The key to that integration is to identify a goal, then design a program within which several kinds of functions will be needed to achieve the goal rather than emphasizing the functional differences such as research and extension. Lage: It sounds eminently reasonable. Am I understanding correctly that you see the experiment station as doing the more basic research, and extension as doing some applied research and also the traditional information transfer function? Kendrick: Yes, that's the way I see it. Lage: But all a unified program? Kendrick: Yes. Lage: Did extension resist the research function, also? 308 Kendrick: No, although certain people in extension reluctantly engaged in research. I think those who were reluctant were so not because they felt that these activities were inappropriate for extension, but because they felt too much emphasis in evaluating their performance was placed on what they did in creative activity and research. It's difficult for some people to think like a research specialist especially if they have not been trained in the philosophy and methodology of research. Not all categories of employees in extension would have research as a major activity of their assignment. Take the public information specialists, for instance. If you expect them to do research along with their assigned responsibility of transmitting information to the public, I think it's an unrealistic expectation and one inappropriate to their assignment. On the other hand, I would expect them to be innovative and creative in the way they communicate the information to various publics that extension is expected to reach. Extension's role is to extend information into a user environment. There are a lot of tactics and many different ways to do that, one of which is to take unfinished pieces of information which aren't quite ready to extend and refine them so that they can be used by consumers of the new information. It may need to be packaged differently than it was in its original form. This may require field trials under a variety of local conditions which is what I call adaptive research. I'm trying to think of a good example — the efficiency of water use, or irrigation practices. Research by members of the experiment station may reveal certain fundamental information about water penetration in certain kinds of soil. It will then be necessary to test that general information under the local conditions of individual counties or districts within counties. So the county extension personnel must engage in localized field experimentation, with a different regime of watering tests to find out which is best for that particular local situation. That's the kind of research I'm talking about extension doing. Well, until the organization understood that we were not asking extension personnel to be genetic engineering specialists but to be prepared to adapt and test the products of generalized research under local situations, confusion prevailed among many of the long-term employees. I don't believe that this is a major problem any more. Twenty-five to thirty years ago a lot of research activities of experiment station personnel were in the field, so all extension people had to do was extend the information to their clients. The major difference between then and now is that Cooperative Extension must do most of the field research now. 309 Kendrick: That's the reason why it's absolutely essential to have a unified plan and budget oversight for the total program. I think in the future the ability to fund and support extension activities will be improved when they are included within specific programs, rather than being penalized because they lose their identity. Lage : I imagine your thrust for change created a certain amount of tension personally for you. Did you get feedback from extension people? Kendrick: Not directly. I have to say I was pretty well supported. The main feedback I got was reading the minutes of the Cooperative Extension Assembly Council, where there would be questions raised about "We are losing our identity, and we are not being supported adequately, and we're being asked to do all these things, but the budget won't match the expectations." There were also misunderstandings of the role of peer evaluations, and questions of why the administration seemed to be shirking its duty in making personnel decisions and putting it off on these peer groups. It's difficult to see the whole picture when you are located in counties or only represent a piece of the whole picture. It is perfectly understandable; I never was angry with those expressions of opinion. I was disappointed that the learning process was so slow. But as Cooperative Extension has matured and gotten more experienced in managing its own affairs, at least we have a number of people now who are experienced and who can see the whole forest rather than only the individual trees. I think it's for the better. Nothing ever moves quite as rapidly as you would think it ought to move. Maybe that's a good thing, too. Lage: I think we've got a good picture of these administrative changes, the reasons behind them, and all the stresses and strains involved. Kendrick: It will be interesting to see how my successor handles the challenges that I left him, because I decided that the last two and a half years of my administration was no time to make major changes. I realized that somebody else would soon come on board and have a few ideas of their own about how these units ought to be managed. I felt that, if I made too many changes, the division might get several changes on top of one another, and that wouldn't be good for the morale of the organization. I did know that if I had continued, I was going to combine the Cooperative Extension planning and programming operation into one division office, one operation. Our most successful budget requests were put together that way, and I knew that that success would certainly dictate the future. 3 10 Lage: Combine them with the experiment station? Kendrick: Well. I have a little difficulty with the nomenclature of our own budget, because the University's budgeting process tends to distinguish between the Agricultural Experiment Station and Cooperative Extension. That procedure resulted in proposals that went forward looking as if they were experiment station requests because research activities predominated over extension activities. But extension components were included in these programs. The format for budgeting, both at federal and state levels, mitigate against doing what ought to be done, and that is look at it program by program. Well, that doesn't prevent us from organizing internally this way, and that's precisely what Ken Farrell, my successor, has proposed to do: establish one office for planning and budgeting and program analysis, responsible to the associate vice president for the Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources. He has decided also [laughs], somewhat vindicating my own judgment, to become the director of the experiment station and director of Cooperative Extension, in addition to his vice presidency. So he's going to do the same thing that I had dene early on, to signal to everyone that there's a single unified coordinated program and not separately operating units. I think the time is a little more right for that arrangement to operate successfully than it was when I did it, but it still remains somewhat problematic as to how successfully the external community will accept that arrangement, because they still, in my judgment, will want to see the director of Cooperative Extension at many of their meetings. I think time will tell whether the external community will begin to understand that the past is not necessarily prologue for the future, but the past is past and it's history, and we have to make new arrangements to meet the future. The Value of Long-Range Academic Planning in the Division Lage: In talking to Loy Sammet. he mentioned five-year academic plans for the experiment station, and he wondered about the value of those. How does that fit into all this planning process? Kendrick: Well, in early '81, '82, amid all this turmoil distracting our attention, we put together a five-year academic plan. It never really developed to the extent that I think it was originally planned, although Loy was a part of helping to gather this all together. What we wound up doing was writing an overview plan that identified a lot of what I've been talking about, the 311 Kendrick: external environmental future trends and the capacity of the organization to respond to these sorts of things. We kind of laid out an overall blueprint. Lage : Was this done from above, or did each unit — ? Kendrick: This was done from above, and I wound up writing a major portion of it, after the staff document seemed not to fit what I thought it ought to address. It was sent upstairs, so to speak. It became a part of the University's overview five-year academic plan. It became a part of the overall plan that each campus was supposed to contribute to. The intent was to have a document plan with more detail in its content the further down into the system it went, so that what I ultimately put together became the overview of the division's goal through the next five years, with the expectation that the individual campus experiment station and extension units would then be more specific and prepare a more detailed design of how they planned to manage their resources to achieve the goals of their respective units consistent with the division's overall goals. The campus plans were in various stages of completeness when I retired. The Davis campus plan was completed. Davis and Berkeley each had an academic plan. Riverside really never got around to finishing theirs. And I don't know what the status is now; it never got finished during my regime. But I don't believe that it has really hindered the operations of the division, particularly the experiment station, to the extent that we were making poor decisions. There are not any topics crying for attention that we weren't able to give attention to. I think that one thing which we didn't foresee but we've been able to respond to effectively was the organized movement for an identified program with the sustainable agriculture group. If you'd asked me five or ten years ago to work that program into our academic plan, it wouldn't have gotten much attention because we were thinking along program and subject matter topics rather than clientele groups. It was no problem for us to identify toxics, biotechnology, and environmental quality as major efforts to be engaged in — all of which are involved in the sustainable agricultural program, but we probably wouldn't have packaged it up as a substantial agricultural pro gram. Now because of the potential activity of specific client groups we have a funded sustainable agricultural program with an existing clientele whom we previously didn't relate to very well. You won't find very many large commercial growers going to a meeting that is dominated by an organization of organic farmers. They get their information by other means. Ten years ago, we 3 12 Kendrick: wouldn't have put together a program specifically for the organic fanner group. But they have become a political entity to be reckoned with; they pay taxes, and it was right and appropriate that we have now developed a program to meet the needs of that clientele. Fortunately, we had a budget augmentation to allow us to address their problems without major disruptions of existing programs. That's a happy solution when you can do it that way. A documented and detailed academic plan will not be very useful or accurate until we are able to develop complete flexibility of our resources. Otherwise it is just an awareness plan — you move when your opportunities arise, and you know where you ought to be moving because you are aware of the fact that certain external forces demand attention. It's not news that chemicals in agriculture need attention. I wouldn't say that it would take an academic plan to acquaint an enlightened administration with the problems that the division must deal with. Lage : That seems to be Mr. Sammet's point of view, also. 313 XV THE DIVISION'S RESPONSE TO CULTURAL CONFLICTS AND CHARGES OF DISCRIMINATION Cultural Conflict between Traditional Extension Staff and New Clientele and Staff [Date of Interview: November 5, 1987] ## Lage: Today is November 5, 1987, the eleventh session with James Kendrick. We were going to follow up on some of the remarks you made on Cooperative Extension. It occurred to me that we'd sort of missed one point in our last session. As you described the differences in background between the old-line employees and some of the new people that came in on the programs having to do with the rural and the urban poor, it appeared that you would have had a lot of cultural conflict within the service. I wondered what you did to deal with that. Kendrick: Well, it's true that as long as Cooperative Extension was in reality Agricultural Extension, dealing primarily with agricultural production problems in California, the staffing was largely composed of agricultural experts and people who had particular skills in dealing with rural farmers. But when Cooperative Extension expanded its mission into what I refer to as people- problems, such as youth and A-H programs for children of migrant workers and the urban poor, and took on the mission of nutrition education of the poor in rural and urban communities in California, it began to experience some of the frustrations and the misunderstandings of people with a wide range of educational backgrounds who generally have not had good experiences dealing with governmental agencies. Most of the experiences people with these backgrounds, particularly the urban poor and the minorities, have had in dealing with institutional representatives have been either with welfare agencies or with a law enforcement agency. Therefore they usually saw the rules enforcement part of agencies rather than the parts with programs that try to help them. 314 Kendrick: Cooperative Extension as an organization was not really prepared technically or philosophically to deal with these new kinds of societal concerns. This was particularly true in the 4-H program which traditionally was a project-based program with clubs and competition. The new 4-H client groups were children of minority and poor people and often with a single parent who was the mother. The father wasn't around. The children had no experience of belonging to clubs and developing projects and competing for prizes. The 4-H program depends on a large voluntary parent leader group. These single parents were not able for a variety of reasons to be very active in the volunteer leader group, so a valuable cultural link was unavailable. As rapidly as possible we tried to remedy the deficiency of having too few staff members who could relate effectively with this new youth client group. We added as replacement staff representatives of these cultural groups, but these staff sometimes found themselves at odds with their colleagues who adhered to the traditional 4-H programs goals and methodologies. Thus, we had some staff conflicts to deal with which had not arisen when the youth and 4-H program was dealing almost exclusively with white middle-class rural youth. We also had some strongly expressed criticisms by some volunteer leaders who felt uncomfortable with the expanded program and from other volunteer leaders who felt that the needs of minority youth were not being addressed properly or in an understanding way. This all placed great strain on our 4-H staff and in my opinion I didn't think most of them were adequately trained to handle what I've labelled "people problems." Lage: But you did hire, then, from some of the minority groups to staff these programs? Kendrick: Yes, in both the 4-H youth and nutritional education programs we sought minority staff. The nutritional education program, however, presented Cooperative Extension with much different problems than 4-H did. The nutrition program was a federally mandated program. The format dictated that the nutritional aides, as I've referred to them in several other interviews, cone from the community which we were trying to serve — that being the poor communities, both rural and urban. We were trying to change their food-buying habits as well as trying to educate the homemaker how to serve her family nutritionally balanced and low- cost meals and still retain their culturally preferred diets. The federal guidelines for the program were rather specific and inflexible. It was a reasonably successful program, but the funding was not nearly enough to address the whole problem of poor nutrition among the poor in California; it was like a raindrop in the ocean. So there were frustrations internally because choices had 315 Kendrick: to be made between eligible counties as to where these programs were to be conducted. Los Angeles County, for instance, could have absorbed the entire California allocation and still fallen short of meeting the total need. Lage: Did you discern that there were conflicts between these newer employees and the older ones who may perhaps have been supervising them — conflicts based in the fact that they came from different cultures? Kendrick: I didn't see them as conflicts that manifest themselves in two kinds of cultures in Cooperative Extension. Conflicts began to show up usually in personnel actions, where performance expectations were not being met by some of the new employees who had a different work ethic than the more traditional employees. I don't mean to imply that all the traditional employees were running around at high speed. But once we began to add minorities to our predominantly white male and female work force, allegations of unfair evaluations and discrimination increased markedly. I need to add also that the females in Cooperative Extension in the late sixties and seventies still were confined to family and consumer science programs and to the youth and 4-H programs. So in the late 1960s Cooperative Extension was a pretty stereotyped organization. When the program was broadened to include the non-agricultural groups, we developed the heterogeneity in our work force, and that is when we began to develop conflicts of opinion within our own C.E. staff. The changing ethnicity of our C.E. staff in the early 1970s occurred simultaneously with renewed efforts by the federal government to enforce the provisions of the Civil Rights Act. Federal agencies were beginning to crack down on federally funded programs that didn't show evidence of aggressive affirmative actions on behalf of minorities et al in both employment and the programs available to people. Programs where discrimination was more than an isolated occurrence were subject to withdraw 1 of federal funds. Our Cooperative Extension was never threatened with that sanction, but it certainly was expected to demonstrate that it had a positive affirmative action program. That requirement dictated many changes in our employee relations procedures. We had to change our employ-recruitment procedures. We had to develop procedures for handling grievance charges by employees who felt that they were victims of discrimination. The policies and the implementation of affirmative action programs were not accepted, I would say, enthusiastically by the entire organization because there were those who had been employees for years who questioned the need for special efforts on behalf of minorities and women. 3 16 Affirmative Action Workshops to Sensitize Staff Lage: Did you have any kind of training to help people come around to the new way of thinking? Kendrick: Oh, we certainly did. That was part of the plan, to conduct affirmative action workshops for all employees, including adminstrators. After I set up a personnel administrative unit within my organization, I supported with no reservations that unit's efforts to acquaint the organization by means of special workshops and training sessions what was expected as far as affirmative action programs were concerned. I participated in several workshops myself, and I found them quite useful. A lot of the prejudicial actions were not conspired to be so; they were the results of habit and unawareness of what certain thoughts, words, and deeds can do to perpetuate the feelings among minorities and women that they do not enjoy an equal opportunity status with the white males of our society. The sensitizing sessions and workshops were given from the top down. Nobody escaped these programs. And I think they were valuable; I think they pointed out areas that needed to be improved and other areas that needed to be strengthened. This was going on prior to, during, and after, the Strong Committee was investigating Cooperative Extension. That committee's report concluded that Cooperative Extension probably did not conspire to discriminate, but its organization and its practices were such that it was perceived to be discriminating against minority employees. Failings of the Strong Committee Report Lage: Now, who was on the Strong Committee? Were these faculty? Kendrick: Mostly. Lage: It was a report you didn't particularly agree with, I gathered from what I've read. Kendrick: That's correct. It was commissioned by Vice President Archie Kleingartner, and the committee reported to him. Kleingartner was the vice president for academic and staff personnel. The committee arose out of a request from a group of complaintants, who had reached the Regents, the President's Office, and some politicians in Sacramento, who felt that Cooperative Extension had it in for minorities and was not giving them fair treatment. To evaluate that criticism, the President, who was David Saxon at 3 17 Kendrick: the time, asked both Archie and me if we didn't think it would be a good idea to commission an impartial review of Cooperative Extension. Of course, we both agreed that that was a logical next step. I didn't find anything wrong with the proposal; I found much to criticize with the product that was produced because, as I said earlier, the committee tended to emphasize the negatives and the deficiencies of the program, rather than give the organization credit for making efforts to bring an old and traditional organization up to speed in addressing some of the civil rights issues. If the same degree of scrutiny had been directed towards campuses and departments, I think the report would have been even more critical than it was of Cooperative Extension. But that's not the way things were done. Cooperative Extension was the one that was singled out, and therefore we had an unusually close review, without much chance to explain the positive accomplishments to the committee members. I think the report was produced by and large by the staff of the committee, and the committee members didn't do very much to alter the staff- written report. Nevertheless, the committee members must bear the responsibility, as any committee does, for the official report regardless of how it was put together. So I filed, at the same time the report was released, my rebuttal to it, trying to point out just what I've been talking about — some of the positive accomplishments and suggesting that some of the allegations had a basis other than discrimination. But there was just enough fire underneath all the smoke to convince me that some of the people in Cooperative Extension really didn't show very good judgment in dealing in various ways with minorities. So there was no attempt on my part to say that the report was all wrong; it was my feeling that all the efforts to try and move forward were dismissed and unrecorded. Commitment to Excellence and the Work Ethic Lage: And, from what you've just said, some of the moving forward had led to all the disputes that arose. Kendrick: That's right. The moving forward, as I've said many times, was never fast enough and never enough to satisfy the complaintants. That was expressed by Regent [Vilma] Martinez, and Regent [Yori] Wada, and Regent [John] Henning, the three Regents who expressed personal concern about this problem. I never felt that the majority of the Board of Regents was as critical as those three 318 Kendrick: were. I think alleged discrimination is an issue that has been before the University for quite some time, and that it has emerged as a top priority due to the changing demography of California, where minorities are on their way to becoming majorities, just by population changes, and that the University is trying to adjust to that demographic shift. The area in which the University of California acknowledges that it discriminates, whether it be in personnel actions or programs, is in favor of excellence. We make no bones about it. We discriminate in favcr of the work ethic, in a sense that we expect people to perform at the top of their capacity, and we expect their performance to be creative and first class. And that, I think, is where the University has a problem adjusting to cultures that do not necessarily reward that kind of devotion to duty. The yardsticks are a little longer. The public school system has slipped in regard to the demands for performance in some of the basic skills; the grading system has slipped. The public schools seldom fail anybody any more for not performing, and they find other excuses for granting a passing grade, or shift them into classes that are less demanding, or what have you. So performing in the rigorous environment in which the University of California has excelled is a major challenge for high school graduates with marginal preparation for the University's demanding curricula. The charge that we could add more minorities to our work force if we would just go out and look for them, has always been one I've had difficulty dealing with. If you look at some of the graduation rates of minorities in some of the technical disciplines that we seek staff for. the availability pool is virtually nonexistent. Several years ago. there were only two black Ph.D.'s granted in mathematics in the U.S. Well, two are not enough to make a difference in the affirmative action goals when one considers the nation as a whole. The dropout rate in high school of Hispanics and blacks, particularly the males, is an embarrassment for society and a smoldering ember of future serious problems for all of us. If these youngsters do not complete their high school education, they're certainly not going to be candidates for any position with the University of California, either as students or as staff. So it's a major problem of trying to meet the hopes and expectations of minorities, as I understand them, and trying to maintain the institutional quality that the University of California is noted for. And that was another part of the problem with which we had to deal in changing Cooperative Extension's ethnic mix and its personnel practices. 319 Kendrick: But we moved forward, and Jerry Siebert, who received most of the alleged charges for not managing effectively, was nevertheless, in my judgment, doing all that he could to promote affirmative action goals for both employees and Cooperative Extension's programs. Lage: As you spoke with him personally, did he seem committed to making these changes? Kendrick: I never had any doubt that he was committed to try to incorporate minorities in the work force as well as broaden the programs to meet the needs of minority communities. But he also was committed to excellence and good performance. That's always been a difficult thing for me to deal with because our critics never acknowledged that what appeared to them as acts of discrimination were most often actions which resulted from deficiencies of excellence or poor performance. That doesn't mean that excellence and top performance are racial traits. But they certainly are what I think we have to hold out for as far as the University of California is concerned. Role of the Regents and the Work Ethic Lage: Tell me more about dealing with the Regents. Would you deal with them as individuals as well as at the Regents' meetings? Kendrick: In both ways. During the height of the allegations of discrimination and alleged lack of administrative skills in dealing with the problem, Kleingartner, Saxon, and I met more than once with the group of Regents whom I have named. Lage: Just these three, Martinez, Wada, and Henning? Kendrick: Stanley Scheinbaum was a part of that group also. Stanley was a long-term Regent, very interested in the University — a good Regent. In fact, they were all good Regents. They had a particular concern about these allegations because they were receiving lots of information, in the form of phone calls, letters, and student newspaper articles, with allegations that described personal events. The employee union on the Berkeley campus took an active role in promoting these allegations on behalf of Cooperative Extension's grievances. Lage: I remember from the FSM movement the criticism of the Regents interfering too much in the University. And yet just a few years later, when it's perceived that maybe through pressure on the Regents you can make changes, people do expect the Regents to step in. 320 Kendrick: Well, that certainly was my experience. To the credit of those with whom I met frequently — trying to convince them that things were not as bad as was being painted and that we were making changes to improve the efforts in affirmative action — I felt that they weren't really meddling in the day-to-day operations. They were really concerned that we were not addressing aggressively enough what they saw to be a major deficiency in Cooperative Extension's treatment of its minority employees. And since Cooperative Extension had been examined very closely by the Strong Committee, we received more than average attention because the committee's report contained some evidence that all was not right in our operations. So I would say that Cooperative Extension bore the brunt on behalf of the entire University, of allegations of deficient affirmative action efforts and violations of the Civil Rights Act. But I need to point out that the other parts of the University did not have the kind of diverse clientele to deal with that Cooperative Extension did in extending some of its programs. We were dealing with a relatively undereducated part of the minority population whom those concerned with students and faculty would never come in contact with. That made a difference, also. To the credit of the President, he backed my position almost completely. He didn't demand that heads roll and that we make a lot of adjustments. I did make some personnel adjustments; I felt that there was enough deficiency in the management of our personnel office to warrant a change there. ff Lage: Would that be personnel for the whole division, or just for Cooperative Extension? Kendrick: That officer handled personnel matters for the whole division, but the major areas of activity were in Cooperative Extension because personnel in the experiment station were really the responsibilities of the campus administration. So it was in Cooperative Extension where I had direct concern about personnel administration. The Affirmative Action Program in Extension and Its Positive Accompl ishments Kendrick: One of the changes recommended by the Strong Committee with which I reluctantly agreed was to appoint an officer who reported to me aa an affirmative action officer. That office would then operate 321 Kendrick: in a way that would help move plans forward for affirmative action programs. It would be a clearinghouse for anyone who needed extra help and attention in affirmative action matters. It was also a place where staff could lodge their complaints and allegations and know that they would be brought to the attention of the vice president because the affirmative action officer was responsible only to me. I asked Zeke [Hezekiah] Singleton to be the acting affirmative action officer until we could recruit a permanent appointment. Zeke at that time was the associate program leader for 4-H and youth programs and was a respected operating officer. It was a good interim appointment. He put to rest some of the ruffled feathers. But his career was really devoted to youth and 4-H, and he wanted to get back to that program as soon as possible. The affirmative action officer whom I appointed as a result of the recruitment process was Eugene Stevenson. Gene had been in the dean of student's office on the Davis campus before he joined my program as the affirmative action officer and functioned in that capacity until about the last year of iny vice presidency. In addition to appointing an affirmative action officer, we developed an office that had responsibility for completing the many reports required in affirmative action programs as well as the responsibility for developing affirmative action plans acceptable to the USDA, the federal oversight agency for this program. This office also had to accumulate data that identified areas of accomplishment as well as areas of deficiencies. Affirmative action analyses have become very sophisticated in which potential minority employee availabilities are compared with the rate of change in your organization as a measure of whether any progress is being made in achieving affirmative action employment goals. Lage: So they take into account the nature of the work force that's available. Kendrick: Yes. Even though the data may be deficient, the methodology is sound. The analyses, however, may lead to false conclusions. For instance, if you're looking for plant pathologists to add to your extension specialists' staff, you have to know how many minorities are available in the graduating pool of Ph.D.'s in plant pathology. Well, that's not all that easy to come by because the categories used in national registries usually are not specific enough to identify all the technical specialties. It is likely that plant pathologists would be included among all biologists and that isn't very helpful in trying to use that data 322 Kendrick: in the analyses or for recruiting pools. So there are glitches in the data. But nevertheless, they are used to make measurements of progress. The Affirmative Action Office, I thought, while performing as well as it could, was really on the outside of the administration. It could bring information to the attention of the line administrators and make them aware of areas needing improvements, but it had no direct involvement in administering personnel actions. I've never really felt that an affirmative action office or officer who was only an adjunct to the line administration was the most effective way to accomplish the goals of the program. So my ultimate goal was to eliminate the affirmative action officer, and hold all of the line administrators responsible for accomplishments. That way you can measure their actions against their intentions and do something about it. So about a year before I retired I changed the affirmative action officer into an ombudsman, which was more characteristic of the activity he performed. He was available to listen to people and to attempt to resolve conflicts at all levels of employment in our division. He reported only to me, but he had the freedom to work with everyone in the division wherever his service was useful. In making this change I then held the administrators in Cooperative Extension at all levels responsible for moving forward on the affirmative action plans. Lage: And doing the reports as well? Kendrick: We had the reports prepared in Cooperative Extension's planning office, and moved the affirmative action staff to the division's personnel unit. So the reports got produced along with other reports. Lage: But that change didn't reflect a lessening of the commitment or — Kendrick: It certainly didn't. In fact, I thought it improved the commitment. But the critics suggested that we were backing out of our program because we were doing away with the affirmative action officer. Lage: Did Eugene Stevenson become the ombudsman? Kendrick: Yes. Eugene became the ombudsman. Lage: How did he feel about that? Kendrick: He felt reasonably good about it. Gene had suffered some criti cism during the time he was our affirmative action officer. Some people felt that he had joined the establishment, so to speak. 323 Lage: He was a black man, I'm assuming. Kendrick: Yes. He was a black man. But he was accused of ineptness and not moving forward fast enough, and he — unjustly I thought — was accused of some irregularities in personnel dealings. So he lost credibility to some extent as affirmative action officer. But I told him when I offered him the position that I expected him to work himself out of the position, out of the job. I wasn't suggesting that he work himself out of employment, but I looked forward to the day when we would not need an affirmative action officer, because all administrators would be pursuing affirmative action goals in the course of discharging their regular duties. By having special affirmative action offices, there is a tendency for some administrators to defer to that office some actions which the administrators ought to be pursuing on their own. Some of the positive things we did, and Jerry Siebert is to be commended for this, was to introduce affirmative action accomplishments into the evaluation criteria for advancement of all the academic employees in Cooperative Extension. They had to show some evidence of accomplishment or commitment in affirmative action activities. And I recall several occasions when Jerry refused to promote people who had consistently ignored the program and failed to make any efforts in the affirmative action area, even though they had contributed effectively enough in other areas to have been advanced. Lage: Would this be affirmative action as regarding the organization, or regarding the programs serving the minority community? Kendrick: Well, it was a mixture of both. Every member of Cooperative Extension wasn't expected to have the same kind of affirmative action program. Some, most administrators, worked with personnel while our advisors and specialists worked mostly with clientele. We expected all of our employees to make some effort in affirma tive action. But those who consistently resisted making any effort whatsoever, or who were outspoken critics of the policy were held back in their normal rates of advancement in our system. That personnel policy wasn't something we could toot our horn about because we were dealing with people and personnel actions, and it was the kind of information I did not enjoy reading about in the Daily Calif ornian or the local press. There was always the possibility that we would stimulate some litiga- ation because of these actions. So we continued quietly to make our personnel program responsive to affirmative action goals by imposing sanctions where and when it seemed appropriate to do so. Our recruitment procedures were changed to include women and minorities in the search and selection process, as well as increasing our recruiting efforts at institutions that had 324 Kendrick: records of graduating minorities and women. We were modestly successful and probably more successful than other parts of the University. From the time I was appointed vice president, Cooperative Extension went from all white male county directors to where there must have been a dozen to fourteen county directors who were female by the time I retired. The director of our personnel unit was Nancy McLaughlin. The leader of the planning and analysis unit in Cooperative Extension was Doris Smith. So women were moving into responsible administrative positions in Cooperative Extension, starting mainly in the mid- 1970s. Not only were women moving up in our administration, but so were the minorities. When I retired, we had two Asian male county directors, two male Hispanic county directors, and several black female county directors, one of whom was in Los Angeles County. So I felt that we were making good progress in our efforts to make all priorities in Cooperative Extension available to anyone who was qualified. The other thing that pleased me was that the stereotyped female assignment in Cooperative Extension is history because we now have female livestock advisors and other agricultural advisors, as well as female specialists in pest control positions. When I came to University Hall in 1968, females in Cooperative Extension were confined to the family and consumer sciences or 4-H programs. Now they are out in the field rubbing shoulders with the traditional aggies. That is a positive sign of accomplishment. Lage: Did you get any feedback on how they were received by the agricultural population? Kendrick: Surprisingly, it didn't bother the agricultural population. [laughter] I never had any complaints that came to me directly. I don't doubt that some eyebrows were raised and some questions raised about whether these young ladies knew anything about agriculture or not, but I think their performance put these criticisms to rest. The Division's Exchange Program with Southern University in Louisiana Kendrick: One of the other programs that I am quite proud of was not a Cooperative Extension program, and it never got much publicity. Lowell Lewis was concerned that we weren't making much progress in affirmative action in the Agricultural Experiment Station, and of course it was much more difficult to do so because, as I've indicated earlier, the personnel are campus-based, and the recruit ment of faculty was the responsibility of the campus administration. 325 Kendrick: We felt that we had to make a positive effort to see if we couldn't get the pool of eligible minority candidates for faculty positions increased. The way to do that is to increase minority enrollment in graduate programs. That is what we set out to do. Lowell Lewis had spent six months in Washington. D.C., in the National Association of State Universities' and Land Grant Colleges' office before he joined my staff. He had struck up a friendship there with a man in the association's office who was in charge of the public Negro colleges of the South, and this officer ultimately went to Southern University in Louisiana, an 1890 public university for blacks. That seemed like a good opportunity for the Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources to establish a relationship with Southern University to see if we couldn't encourage bright undergraduate students to pursue graduate training in some of the agricultural sciences. So we entered into a formal agreement with Southern University and the division and had four campuses committed to participating in the program — Riverside, Berkeley, Davis and Santa Cruz. We put together a policy committee with Southern University people, representatives from these four campuses, and our office on it. We brought students from Southern University to California during the summer for a two-week period to see the programs being offered at the University of California, and to get acquainted with some of the research that was being undertaken. In addition to that program, we were hopeful that we could have an exchange of faculty and, in fact, did exchange a few faculty between Southern University and the University of California. Lage : This would be for a semester? Kendrick: No, it worked out to be most convenient for the summer time. One of the faculty members from the New Orleans campus of Southern University came out and spent two summers in the laboratory of Professor [Bob B.] Buchanan at Berkeley. That was really quite a successful contact. Lage: Did this lead to more graduate students coming out of Southern University to UC? Kendrick: I'm not sure that it did. We attempted to identify potential graduate students by their junior year, so that they could go back and make up any deficiencies that they had in their undergraduate program. Several students expressed an interest in our graduate programs, and a couple of them were admitted, I think, to the Ag Econ program at Davis. Whether they ever came, 326 Kendrick: I don't know, but I think not. But they certainly got offers to go other places. We weren't looking necessarily at the students who were in agricultural programs at Southern University; we were looking for students who were in science. That seemed strange to them because they thought if they were going to go into an agricultural program that they had to have an agriculture majcr as an undergrad. Modern agricultural science consists of biotechnology, chemistry, business administration, and nearly all of the professional disciplines you normally find in a comprehensive university. Today's agricultural producer and processor need a greater range of disciplinary knowledge than you usually find in a college of agriculture curriculum which concentrates on production processes. In our graduate program, we want people trained in the basic skills, so a chemistry major, or someone majoring in premed is probably just as valuable to us for our graduate programs as those who pursue undergraduate agriculture majors. As a matter of fact, many who use that channel won't qualify for our graduate programs. That was kind of a shock to Southern University people because they hadn't perceived that entry to agricultural science graduate programs was open to graduates with undergraduate majors of general science and biology programs. That was part of our mission, too. We wanted to break down the stereotype that the only opportunity for blacks in agriculture was in farming. I think that has been a majcr problem in trying to encourage minority involvement in agriculture because historically their experience with agriculture was as a field laborer. They haven't recognized agriculture's change to a science-oriented, business-oriented, international policy-oriented activity. The continued use of poorly educated agricultural field laborers, who are mostly blacks or Mexican emigrants, makes it difficult to change the perception that opportunities in agriculture for those minorities go beyond field labor, if they educate themselves properly. Lage: It's been something they probably want to get out of, if they're interested in advancement. Kendrick: That's true. And the attraction to the ambitious minorities who want to get away from their restrictive home experience is to go into medicine or law or politics or teaching. The role models are there. We don't have any real good role models in agricultural science. A few traditional ones, but — Lage: George Washington Carver. Kendrick: George Washington Carver, but what's happened since? 327 Kendrick: I visited Southern University for several days and found it a delightful experience. I never felt out of place whatsoever. I pointed out to the people administering our joint program that if we could produce a highly qualified black male or female in genetic engineering, that person would have unlimited opportunities for employment. Employers are looking for that kind of skill in minorities, I'm not sure that that message is really understood yet, but the opportunities are unlimited for well-trained minorities and women in this area. I don't think the women are suffering too much now because, for the most part, they've broken the barriers which kept them out of the agricultural sciences. But there still are not enough females majoring in the hard-science areas to satisfy the marketplace, even though it's much, much better than it used to be. In my own profession of plant pathology, I think nearly half the graduate students are female. Lage: That's interesting. That's quite a big percentage. Kendrick: That's a big change. I really feel that the Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources has done a first-class job in trying to move forward in affirmative action and civil rights areas, much more than it has received credit for. Lage: With so much attention focused on you, did you move faster than you might have? Kendrick: We might have moved faster because we were under the gun. But this Southern University-Division of Agriculture program was not an inexpensive program. We devoted a considerable amount of our own resources to it. We employed Prentice Hall, a former Ph,D. chemist from DuPont, who was a graduate from Southern University, to manage this program. He proved to be just what was needed to run the program. He was fully committed to excellence and top performance. His aggressiveness and stubborn adherence to standards caused some problems but he knew that anyone who was less than a top performer wouldn't cut it at the University of California and he didn't want to have any failures on his hands. He worked day and night on this program for about three years. Of course, we funded him completely, but he managed to secure additional support from both the USDA and the National Science Foundation for this program. Lage: But you don't think you really got many results? Kendrick: Well, the cost-ef f ectiveness was just not there. We stimulated some of Southern's students to think about going on to graduate programs, no doubt about that, but they didn't necessarily wind up at the University of California. That was not all bad, but I'm not sure how long you can afford to run a program like this when you don't have any increase in your own graduate program. 328 fi Lage: Is that program still running? Kendrick: Well, I'm not sure. It was running the day I left. I don't kr.ow what my successor has done with it. There have been some administrative changes also at Southern University, from the president on down, and the person who was our original contact and developer of the program at Southern University is no longer there. The new administration had taken over before I retired and were fully committed to the goals of the program, but they didn't have much money to put into it. We were moving from two to four students from and to Louisiana, supporting them for two weeks, supporting their transportation here and providing them with a stipend to compensate for lost wages which they may have otherwise earned during the summertime. These are things you don't often think about in terms of costs of affirmative action programs. We would have never brought this about if we hadn't had Prentice, who thought about the program constantly, and worked with committees, sought out interested faculty at the four cooperating campuses, and worked with the deans' offices at the Davis, Berkeley, Santa Cruz and Riverside campuses. He also had to coordinate the University of California's program and participants with a similar organizational set-up at Southern University. Lage: He sounds like quite a person. Kendrick: He was a dynamo. People who think that just writing a program for affirmative action is all you need to do are whistling "Dixie" in the dark, because it will not come about voluntarily. You must make a firm commitment to the goals and invest major resources in it. This effort demonstrated to me that if you're really serious about affirmative action, you must be prepared to place significant resources into the program. Lage: And over the long run. Kendrick: And not do it just for one year, you're right. It has to be a long-term commitment so that people will ultimately believe that you mean business, rather than implementing the program temporarily to counteract some criticism. So I hope it is continuing. We had hoped to expand the program to include other black universities because Southern University alone couldn't provide enough qualified students for our need. The first one we had hoped to establish a similar relationship with was Howard University. Well, I guess that kind of puts a period to that kind of activity. 329 Surviving in Troubled Times Lage : Let me just ask you — from reading the file folder you gave me, it looks as if you yourself were under a lot of attack. Did you feel that your job was at stake at the time of the Strong report? Kendrick: Well, upon reflection, I see that there were some who thought that I ought to step aside or be removed. I never really felt that I was close to losing my position. I think it would have been easy for the President to believe that he could solve the Cooperative Extension problems by making such a change. I doubt that that move would have served him very well because these allegations of discrimination, etc., were only a small aspect of a very large University program in California's agriculture. I'm not sure what the agriculture community in the state of California would have done if the vice president had been removed because of allegations of poor management as far as affirmative action was concerned. I never felt that I had lost any political base of support from the agricultural segment of California. That possible move was never discussed with me. The President did hold up a portion of a salary merit increase for both Jerry and me, on the basis that we needed to demonstrate some accomplishments before the salary increases would become effective. Financially, I never really recovered from that. I thought that action was taken only to gain the support of the four or five critical Regents and that the President gave us no credit for the positive accomplishments I've mentioned earlier. I accepted his judgment reluctantly, nevertheless, and tried to make some more positive changes. But there were a few people, up until the time I retired, who felt that I should have been dismissed because of these alleged deficiencies. Lage: But were there people on the other side who were unhappy with you for the changes you were making? Did you sense that in Cooperative Extension? Kendrick: No, I didn't. They weren't all that vocal. There were some who thought affirmative action was a bunch of nonsense, and that we were paying too much attention to people who weren't qualified to join their ranks. But these critics were not in positions of leadership and power. Most of them were down at the working level of Cooperative Extension, and I just accepted that as the noise level. But it was a period that was not comfortable. You never really knew what was going to show up in the public press. Lage: It seemed to be a very stressful period of your life. 330 Kendrick: But my nature was to not toss in the towel. I knew that a lot of positive things were going on. and I felt that there were some unjust allegations that I could outlive if given a chance. I also felt that my removal on this basis would have been unsettling to the organization. I had a number of suggestions that I ought to move Jerry Siebert aside, as you read in the documentation. There was a concern that I didn't openly recruit for the director of Cooperative Extension at the time that I relinquished that title and position to restore a free-standing director of Cooperative Extension and assistant vice president. I felt that Jerry in operating as the associate director was doing everything that I expected a director to do, so it was not really a new position at all, it was merely retitling a position already filled, so it didn't require open recruitment. That situation was contrary to the director of the experiment station, which I also restored at that time to a free standing position, because I did not have a person in place who was filling the associate directorship in the same way. Harold Heady had functioned in that position for several years, but by mid-1980 we agreed mutually that our respective interests would be best served if he returned to the Berkeley campus as a professor. So there was a vacancy, and I really had to recruit a director of the experiment station. Lage: But you saw Siebert as being the effective, or the actual, hands- on director already. Kendrick: Yes. He was. He wasn't doing anything differently as the associate director than he did when I asked the president to give him a director's title. I had to persuade the president that Jerry was the best person for the position and that it wasn't a matter of creating a new position but rather a retitling of an existing position. I did this through documentation, pointing out much of Jerry's positive accomplishments. Lage: And Kleingartner seemed to support you, according to the letters — Kendrick: Yes, he did. He thought I should have used open recruitment, but he didn't object to the fact that Jerry was my choice for the directorship. I wanted Jerry to receive credit for the positive accomplishments in Cooperatice Extension. In the course of his being director, all of these allegations continued, and some personnel actions continued not to be pleasing to everybody. Much of the criticism wasn't associated with minorities and women, but he was nondiscriminating in his administration of personnel matters. In that respect, he couldn't really have been accused of discriminating practices against minorities. 331 Kendrick: But I think that he had a tough assignment, for all the reasons that I have mentioned, with Cooperative Extension's broadened clientele base and the heterogeneity of the backgrounds of the people he was working with. It was not like a campus community, where the faculty you're dealing with even in the different disciplines have all had similar educational backgrounds, and have had to jump through a lot of educational hoops to get where they are. They tend to accept the notion that if you're going to be around as regular faculty you've got to jump through some more performance hoops. That's sort of the way of the academic life. In Cooperative Extension, the same situation does not exist. All of the academic employees do not go through the same performance hoops, even some of the promotion criteria aren't explicit enough to suggest that there are differences, and that's a problem. I early on suggested that there ought to be a separate salary scale for specialists, different from that for advisors. It was my attempt to deal with the difference in educational preparation among the academic staff of extension because educational requirements for specialists were different than for advisors. And they don't need to be held to the same kind of research creativity and activity. Well, until an organization is able to mature to the point where they are willing to recognize those differences and be more explicit in what the expectations are, they are going to have problems. I think that the whole program in Cooperative Extension is still in the stage of evolution in terms of perfecting their personnel evaluations. But I'm pleased with the progress made because the organization has come a long way in self-governance since 1968 when I arrived on the scene. Lage: So this is all ongoing. Kendrick: Yes. 332 XVI ADMINISTERING PROGRAMS OUTSIDE THE DIVISION OF AGRICULTURE: WATER RESOURCES AND UNIVERSITY SERVICES The Water Resources Center and Its Archive Lage : Let's turn to those programs outside of the Division of Agriculture that you administered. Kendrick: All right. In the course of the eighteen and a half years that I was the vice president, there were a number of programs that were not under the division organization for which I was the responsible administrative officer in the President's Office. The one that I inherited right from the start was the Water Resources Center. That had been created, I don't know precisely when, but I think under Dan Aldrich's administration, or at least in that era [established 1956]. It was conceived in an attempt to coordinate and fund specific research proposals of the faculty members on any of the campuses of the University of California who were doing research in water matters. In the early stages of the program, it had mostly a technological orientation, the sea water conversion laboratory, and research dealing with the engineering aspects of the water storage and tranportation. Lage: Did it begin during the — did it have anything to do with the California Water Plan, the interest of Pat Brown and — ? Kendrick: Well, that certainly didn't hurt it any. I'm fuzzy relative to the period when it was established. The action which supported this effort in coordination was federal legislation administered by the Department of Interior. The legislation authorized the establishment of a network of water centers in each state much like the agricultural experiment stations. I know Dan Aldrich had a great deal to do with developing that piece of legislation because it was sponsored by the land grant association which I have referred to several times [the National Association of State Universities and Land Grant Colleges]. The association was the overseer of the legislation as it was progressing through the Congress and getting approved. 333 Kendrick: Lage: Kendrick ; Lage: Kendrick: The act authorized an allocation to institutions [one per state] to set up water centers or water institutes. So there are quite a number of water centers or water research institutes in the United States, and they also are expected to work with state government water agencies as well. The University of California decided early on, I think wisely, that the main use of the allocated funding for water studies in this state would be granted to faculty to pursue research studies and to support graduate students. UC officials also decided that it would be governed by an advisory committee composed of faculty representatives from all of the campuses that participated in the program and chaired by the then- university dean of agriculture, or when I took it over, the vice president for agricultural sciences. So for eighteen and one-half years I chaired the Water Resources Coordinating Board with representatives from each of the campuses except San Francisco. It was a good experience. The board set the policies, made recommendations concerning grants to fund faculty proposals, and also maintained at UCLA and at Berkeley what is now known as the Water Resources Center Archives. The actual day-to-day operation of the center was the responsibility of a director appointed by the President. Professor Art Pillsbury (UCLA) was the director when I oook over the board's chairmanship, and later Professor Herb Snyder (UC Davis) was appointed director. Herb served in this capacity for ten years. The archives at Berkeley are world-renowned as a first-class collection of water documents, accumulated through the years by people who have been active in water policy and water management matters. It is located in what used to be the engineering library in O'Brien HalL After struggling for many years in rather inadequate quarters, I think it's handsomely housed now. Is it part of the Water Resources Center, then? Yes. It's supported completely by the Water Resources Center. So there is a real tangible asset associated with the establishment of the water center in the development of the archives. Part of the center's archives is in an archival collection in the engineering school at UCLA. It's not nearly as big or well housed as the Berkeley archives, but they're linked. They are managed by the director of the Water Resources Center, and the two librarians report to the director. And is this a cross-departmental effort, I assume? that are supported are in various departments? The faculty Yes, they are. The only common link is water research. 334 Broadening the Disciplinary and Geographic Bases Kendrick: As I said, the early coordinating board was dominated by technological considerations. I felt two changes in the board's composition were important to make, and the board agreed. The programmatic change needed was to broaden the agenda to include more economic and sociological considerations. The effectiveness of policy changes needed to be enhanced, and I wanted the advice of the coordinating board to make a difference. To do this we had to have people on that board who were active administrators on their campuses, who could make changes — not just a board composed of faculty making noise about things, but the action people. So we judiciously sought to have the chancellor nominate people who were part-time associate deans, or deans, or program directors, or what have you, with some administrative responsibilities and who also had a faculty appointment. Second, we — and I had a good deal to do with this — wanted to broaden the disciplinary base of representation. We kind of worked ourselves into an impossible situation, because we decided we wanted the social sciences represented, the humanities represented, and the sciences, as well as semi- administrators in some cases, and good campus distribution. The difficulty is that with so many restrictions it was hard to find enough qualified people. But we managed pretty well. We felt, and I supported this, that we did not necessarily need to support agricultural programs, even though they were not to be ignored by the center. There was not enough money in the whole program to supply the research needs of irrigation studies in agriculture, as a problem set, besides which the Agricultural Experiment Station already had a good deal of activity devoted to these kinds of studies. The value of the programs overseen by the water center was that they went outside of agriculture, and they also engaged faculty from campuses other than Davis. Riverside, and Berkeley in the studies. So, that was done. We tried to get all eight campuses — we kind of ignored San Francisco because they didn't have a program in this area — but all eight campuses represented on a rotating basis for three-year terms, and we tried to get law and the social sciences, public policy, and science and engineering represented. We found that we had to look for a dean at Santa Cruz, for example. We didn't have a lot of degrees of freedom by the time we got the cross-hatching demand put together, but it did work out reasonably well. It was one of the most satisfying experiences I've had in the University, chairing that coordinating board for the water center. I found it stimulating in an academic sense because we 335 Kendrick: Lage : Kendrick: Lage: Kendrick: brought together from different disciplines people with a common interest, in both policy and technology of water use, water transport, storage, and public policy. The director who was selected by Chet McCorkle and me to succeed Professor Arthur Pillsbury was Professor J. Herbert Snyder, an ag economist at Davis. He was the director of the center for ten years; for the bulk of the time that I had anything to do with the center in an active sense. Herb's predecessor. Art Pillsbury, was a irrigation engineer at UCLA, on the UCLA faculty. One of the last acts I had to do before I retired was to replace Herb Snyder, who retired three months ahead of me. I was able to get that done in the last few months, and selected Professor Henry Vaux. Jr. And what is his field? Resource economics, but with a special interest in agriculture. He really followed in his father's footsteps pretty closely. Henry is at Riverside, on the Riverside faculty. He's had some direct experience in water policy, nationally, and he also served on the coordinating board for the water center. Chairing the Interdisciplinary Coordinating Board Lage: Kendrick: Lage: Kendrick: What other kinds of things did the coordinating board do? mentioned it was such a satisfying experience. You Well, I think the satisfying experience was the academic stimulation that I got, and I think my colleagues also experienced the same degree of satisfaction. There was a genuine feeling of camaraderie. Did it work out bringing people from all these different disciplines? It certainly did. It was said to me by one of the members of the coordinating board that this was such a unique experience, that this is the one board where everybody seeks to stay on. Of course, we sometimes had a hard time not reappointing them because you get well acquainted and you know how to deal with your colleagues. Our meetings tended to become more seminars on policy, discussions of policy, and sometimes candid discussions about the management of the center and the management of the archives. 336 Kendrick: We spent a lot of time trying to get the archives up to speed. where they would be a real service. At one point, I felt that it was going to consume all of the money we had available just supporting archives and was trying to give them to the library. But the Berkeley librarian, supported to some extent by the UCLA librarian, wouldn't agree to maintain the integrity of the archives. We felt that it would lose its value if it were dispersed, so we backed off that move. If I was willing to grant a certain amount of the budget to the library, but I was not willing to commit the budget in perpetuity to support the archives, hoping that the regular budgeting process of the library would in time be augmented enough to make the archives a regular unit of the library, supported through the regular budgeting process. But we didn't bring that about, and so we dropped that tactic. The individuals who served on the coordinating board were historians at Davis, UCLA; the economists at Santa Barbara, Davis, and Riverside; the public policy people from Santa Cruz and Berkeley, and the technical engineers and water scientists from Irvine. San Diego, Davis, Riverside, and Berkeley. They were a cross-section of the faculty engaged in an interdisciplinary experience. I don't think this kind of program is offered often enough in this institution. Lage: Did the board make policy in terms of what kind of research grants would be given? Kendrick: Yes, it did. We designed areas that we thought needed attention, and we would call for proposals in those particular areas. So the board really managed the direction of the research more so than some boards do. It was truly a faculty-governed program. Lage: Was Luna Leopold involved in that? He seems to have an interest in water and to have an interdisciplinary approach. Kendrick: Luna was a member of our coordinating board for a while. He never became fully engaged in the water center activities, but the times he did participate with us, he was a good contributor. Of course, he worked with many of the people we supported and funded. One of the early people I locked horns with was George Maslach. who was then the dean of engineering. George felt that we were spending too much time with not enough money. George and I had a long relationship in other matters, in other areas. We sort of agreed to differ on a lot of things. George is a very strong personality, and a little gruff and rough in his manner. But I think we respected one another and got along pretty well. as well as most people do. with George. 337 Kendrick: The water center accomplished a lot because it produced documents and had a publication series. Research reports came out in a Water Resources Center series. It supported a lot of diversity in its research program. It participated in national and regional affairs; Herb, the director, had much national exposure. On a couple of occasions, I traveled back to Washington to testify in support of legislation which was designed to increase the center's budget allocation. We tried to augment the allocations to the centers and were successful in some instances and not successful in other instances. The real deficiency of the concept, I think, is that it became political. The basic allocation to Rhode Island is the same as the basic allocation to California, and California's water use and storage problems are certainly much different and probably more complex than water problems in Rhode Island. But the political reality of trying to increase augmentations for one state requires that you do not suggest that every state didn't need a water center. You can never win in politics by taking something away from one state and giving it to another. Thus, the legislation for augmenting the basic allocation to each state's water center was equal for all states. I thought it was poor legislation, but that is the reality of national politics. I think we've probably spent enough time on the center. It has a good program, one of the best to induce interdisciplinary faculty involvement, and with good directors who see that need, it has contributed to a better understanding of California's water problems. Working with an External Advisory Committee Kendrick: One of the things I neglected to mention is that the center has an external advisory committee to which we paid attention. It consisted of people from all walks of life dealing with water and water policy, such as irrigation district managers, the manager of the Metropolitan Water District, Bureau of Reclamation administrators. Sierra dub representatives, Environmental Defense Fund representatives, and interested citizens. Sylvia McLaughlin from Save San Francisco Bay Association was a long time member of the advisory committee. Lage: So there you have a very diverse group as well. Kendrick: And those meetings were really stimulating. The director would, with the aid of the officers of the advisory committee, put together a rather stimulating program of talks and discussions. We allowed plenty of time for floor discussion. [laughs] And if 338 Kendrick: Lage: the right kind of disciples of their points of view showed up. we had a very stimulating day of conversation about policy. Of course, water is an emotional subject in California, and it was often difficult to get down to objective consideration of the problem because there sometimes was so much emotional rhetoric associated with people's commentary. But I think the Water Resource Center's Advisory Committee by and large was pretty good. They respected one another's point of view, even though they differed very violently. We had journalists represented on the committee. It was really truly representative of nearly all points of view. How much listening to them did you do? policy? How did they affect Kendrick: Well* we paid attention to them, but the advice was often mixed. We gave them documents put together by the center describing the goals and the roles of the center, but it proved a little difficult for them to make meaningful comment because there was such a wide diversity of points of view represented on the committee. Lage: They almost have to make individual comments. Kendrick: In one sense, I like that kind of diversity in advisory committees because it allows you to go ahead and do what you really think you ought to do anyway. Everybody's got an axe to grind or at least a point of view to express, and you have to make judgments as to how responsive you are to their concerns. You make judgments relative to how serious specific comments are in terms of all of them. It's a lot easier to respond and deal with an advisory committee that's widely representative than one which has a single agenda item, because that item may not fit into the program of the division as a whole. I think that there is something to be learned about how to work with advisory committees, and how to structure them to allow the program to proceed in the best interests of a broader public rather than for just the special interest groups. That was the assignment that the director of the center had to undertake and pursue. The advisory committee members had appointments. Nominations of people to serve on the center's advisory committee came mainly from the coordinating board people themselves. Committee members were appointed by the President, and most members felt honored by these presidential appointments. The coordinating board memberships were appointed by the President also, so they had stature associated with them. We never dismissed anybody from this advisory committee. As long as anyone wanted to come to those meetings, they were invited to 339 Kendrick: come. After their terms expired, we gave them emeritus status. No one ever felt that when they had served a term they were through. As long as they wanted to go to the expense of getting to one of these meetings, we would welcome them. And we had any number of people who were in emeritus status who were faithful attenders and who were very vocal in their contributions. Lage: Sounds like quite an experience. Kendrick: Well, the reason I've spent as much time on it as I have is that I think it represents one of the strengths of the outreach program, linked with the academic activities. The center in no way coordinated all of the work on water being done in the University of California, and it didn't make an attempt to do so. It would have been impossible to do so. Some of our external associates didn't quite understand why it was not possible to do so, but unless the center was supporting the research, there was no way to identify all the water research. The center maintained a comprehensive catalogue of UC*s water research projects, but it did not attempt to coordinate those which were not supported by the center. There's no single catalogue of published research for the faculty of the University of California, so there is absolutely no way to know what the total research and interests of the faculty are. Lage: That sounds like an interesting project, actually, to get everything keyed into the computer, all the University's research, and then you'd be able to search out by category. Kendrick: I wouldn't try to do it. [laughter] There has been some legislative interest expressed in that kind of program. In fact, there has been some legislation introduced to do precisely that. Lage: Probably has certain dangers, also. Kendrick: It does. It's hard enough for us to do it in the Agricultural Experiment Station, where we try to catalogue everything that's being done under research categories of the experiment station. We list publications, both in progress and in preparation. That's an organization which is accustomed to the expectation and rigidity of regularly reporting what you do. When you get outside of organized research units into the free-standing, regular faculty pursuing their own individual disciplines, where the quality of what they do is measured by their colleagues, then I don't know just how you would go about finding out what the totality of the University's research contribution would be. It would be a monumental job. 340 The Printing Plant and the University Relations Office Kendrick: When David Saxon reorganized his office, he reduced the numbers of vice presidents, and he asked me if I would take on a couple of responsibilities that had been assigned to one of the other vice presidents who had resigned to go somewhere else. That was the University Relations Office and the Printing Department. The rationale for me to do that was that we had our own public information group, and we produced a lot of documents, not in hardcover print, but we had a reproductive operation out at the old Ford plant in Richmond. We had one printing plant, so why not run another one? Lage: How did you feel about taking that on? Kendrick: Well. I did it as an accommodation, I turned it over to my director of administrative services, and said. well, this was just another work assignment. It was just learning to deal with another set of circumstances. The printing plant is a union shop, and of course our cooperative extension reproduction unit was not a union plant. So we had a different environment and different criteria under which we had to operate. But we had a good manager of the printing plant, so much of the work was done by working with the manager, Donald Bell. Lage: What about the University Relations Office? Kendrick: University relations was the program with the University Explorer, and it had the media contacts, both for the written word and the — Lage: All the media? Kendrick: Yes, from the President's Office, from University Hall. Lage: That sounds like a great responsibility. Kendrick: Well, I wondered how to manage it. It had a fairly large staff, both reporters and artists. I wondered just how to incorporate that into my work schedule. So I gave it to Jerry Siebert. who had, within Cooperative Extension, a media group. Jerry did the best he could to work and relate to that group, but it was an unhappy group. It suffered from a lack of continuity in its leadership, and the people who were within the group had difficulty working with one another. I think there was a lot of, as I viewed it, individual independence. We changed the leadership, and it improved somewhat. Valena Williams, who is not with the University any more, but went with KQED, tried as best she could to unify the group. She did a yeoman job of 341 Kendrick: trying to bring things together and institute a little discipline in the group, but she was whipsawed by some people who were accustomed to being quite independent in their operations. As I say, we didn't begin to solve all the problems associated with that University Relations Office; it was just more of a workload than we could really handle. Lage: It seems like it would have been a terribly important office, especially at that time, when the University was under so much fire. Kendrick: Well, it was. And it continues to be an important office. Lage: Now it's been moved to what? Kendrick: Well, I figured both of those extra responsibilities weren't compatible with my fundamental assignment, so when Vice President Brady came on board in the latter years of David Saxon's administration, and stayed on under President Gardner — I don't know precisely when it occurred, but I said to Ron Brady one day, "How would you like to manage the printing plant?" I thought it fit within the broad definition of his work assignment as the senior vice president for administration. And he said, "Well, I dor.'t mind." So we made a change. Then, earlier, President Saxon had a special assistant, David Wilson, who seemed to me to be available to run the University Relations program, and one that really needed to reflect the needs of the President, not the needs of Jim Kendrick. David Wilson, the President's special assistant, thought well of the idea, so contrary to what usually happens in University Hall, I gave something up, a second program. It was a good move for my administration, having David take it over. That program now is in the portfolio of Vice President Baker, whose title is vice president for university relations and budget. Combining those two offices was President David Gardner's concept as he put together his administration. I think it's operating much more effectively now, but a lot of its ills didn't cure themselves, just by changing from me to David Wilson. It continued to be a place where there was a source of internal grievances and unhappiness within the staff and with the administration. I certainly didn't need to inherit some more internal unhappiness. [laughter] It was a good move on my part to give it to someone who had direct responsibilities for it. So it was a very brief association, but I enjoyed it, and I don't mean to say that it was all a pain in the neck. I liked the people, and I liked to work with the people and got acquainted with another segment of University people. 342 Regents' Security Officer. 1976-1984 Kendrick: Another thing I picked up just because of the consolidation of vice presidencies was [laughs] — the Regents' security officer. Lage: What did that entail? Kendrick: Not very much. What was needed was a University officer who could, at Regents meetings, speak on behalf of the University to dissident groups who tried to disrupt the meetings, read them their rights, and tell them that if they continued the room would be cleared and they were subject to arrest. Lage: Did they pick you for that because of your voice? Kendrick: No. President Saxon picked me because I went to Regents' meetings and was a University officer. Well, there was one other reason. There didn't seem to be another VP who was in a logical position to do that. These were assignments that Vice President Bob Johnson had held, and when Bob decided he wanted to go manage a medical program and not continue at the University, he left University Relations, the Regents' security officer, and printing plant without a home. That's when my title changed from vice president of agricultural sciences to vice president agriculture and university services, taking on these things that were not agriculture, but were service activities for the University. I enjoyed that Regents' security officer bit because it introduced me to another group of University employees whom I would never have come in contact with and learned to appreciate and understand otherwise. There were the professional police groups on the campuses of the University. I worked with Bill [William B.] Beall when he was the Berkeley campus police chief, who was at that time also the coordinator of police services on all of the campuses. We would plan how we would meet potential disruptions at Regents' meetings. We never had any. During my regime, I never had to stand up before an unruly group and say that they were out of order and if they didn't behave themselves they were going to be arrested. So I considered my tenure in this role for about four or five years as really one of a great positive influence. [laughter] But I really came to appreciate the quality and the kind of people who are the University police, and what they were trying to do. Like the rest of the University, they are instilled with quality and duty. Lage: Did you have anything to do about decisions on where the Regents would meet, or how to avoid confrontation? 343 Kendrick: Not where they would meet. This required that I check ahead of time with the secretary of the board, Marj orie Wollman, to see if there was intelligence about what was threatened to happen at the meetings. Our information system was pretty good. You could anticipate whether or not there was going to be one or more carloads of students trying to be disruptive at the meetings. We could prepare for that. We'd have to prepare alternative meeting rooms, so if we had to declare a meeting in adjournment, because of the disruption, we had an alternative place to go in order to conduct the Regents' business in a regular manner. I was part of that decision-making process, and it was my responsibility to advise the President of potential disruptions, or on the other hand, if there was not going to be any trouble at the meetings. I also had to stay in touch with the chairman of the board, and let that person know whether or not to expect anything, and suggest some things that they might do or could do, if things were getting out of hand. So I stayed in touch with the local security officer who had the responsibility for maintaining an environment that was calm and under control. I didn't mean that we didn't have any pickets, or sign wavings, or student advocate groups. We had those, but we didn't have any meeting disruptions that were serious, as we had had during the late sixties and early seventies. Those were tense times, and I was not involved as the security officer at that time. Lage : When did you take it over? Kendrick: Well, it was early in President Saxon's regime. Hitch would be '68 to '75, it was about '76. I gave that up when Ron Brady came. [laughs] That was another gift to Vice President Brady. I said, "You're the administrative officer, you're big and tall; the police services report to you, they don't report to me." So it was logical that I not continue as the Regents' security officer. So in due course, the President agreed to make the change, and Ron took that over. But that was after David Gardner became the President. UC Retirement System Board; Defining the Board's Role Kendrick: The other organization that I took on in 1976 was chairing the University of California Retirement System's Governing Board. That was the name at the time that I assumed responsibility for chairing it. It had nine members, as I recall, the majority of whom were appointed by the President and approved by the Regents. In addition, there were two faculty representatives selected by the Academic Senate and an elected staff representative. The 344 Kendrick: staff representative on the board was elected by all of the non- senate members of the UCRS [University of California Retirement System]. You're a member of the system if you participate in its benefit program. The treasurer of the University was an ex officio member of the board, and the President designated one of the University officers to chair the board. The vice president who had the business and finance unit usually was an appointed member of the board. When I became chair the major concern, other than watching the benefit picture and trying to improve benefits, was the fact that it was not acting as a governing board, in the true sense of the name. The Regents were the governing board, as far as the control of the retirement system was concerned. So actions by the board were not necessarily final, they were recommendations to the President to take to the Board of Regents. So a good deal of my early assignment as chairman was spent persuading the members to recognize the true role of the board, to change the name of the board, to redefine the relationship of the board with the President's Office, the President himself, and the Regents. And that really meant recognizing the fact that the board did not govern, in the sense that it was the final decision- making body for the system. Well, giving up that name "governing board," and recognizing the true role of the board, was kind of a struggle. The faculty representatives, in particular, were reluctant to recognize the fact that they were not the final arbitrators of matters involving the retirement system. The staff representative was a little reluctant also, but less so. The administration representatives were easy to persuade. In fact, they were the generators of it. But it was a board that was a challenge to chair, because of such widely different and strongly expressed views. Our very conservative Regents' treasurer. Bod [Owsley B.] Hammond was a member as was John Perkins, who was the vice president-business and finance, who also had a conservative point of view. David Feller was a professor of law; I think he would recognize that I could call him a very liberal person. He was one of the faculty representatives on the board. His professional background was in labor law. The staff representatives often times I think felt overwhelmed by the faculty members. David knew the system backwards and forwards; he had a lot of experience serving on the board, and he was a very persuasive debater. But he was about 180 degrees away from Bod Hammond's and John Perkins' points of view. U 345 Kendrick: So it was almost a given that whatever issue the administration would bring to the meeting agenda would be supported by the treasurer and the vice president — business ard finance, and would be opposed by the faculty members and frequently the staff representative. The trick was to keep peace and harmony among the members and to keep matters going forward. Issues Debated by the Board Lage : Kendrick: Lage: Kendrick Lage: What kinds of things were you debating about? purpose of it. I'm unclear of the The board would discuss potential augmentations to benefits, whether or not to extend benefits to remarried widows, for instance. The system is complex to administer, similar to an insurance system. Rules and regulations govern almost every decision. There was always room for different interpretations of some of the regulations and to liberalize the regulations governing the types of beneficiaries. The faculty members felt that the treasurer was too conservative in his investment policy. They felt that the market yields with which they were familiar could be greater than those the treasurer was reporting. So there was a bantering back and forth about the reports of investment earnings. The faculty members felt that increased earnings could fund benefit augmentations, or could be used to reduce the amount of member contributions to the system. Other matters debated were setting actuarial assumptions, cost of living adjustments for retirees, number of options for supplemental retirement individual contributions, to name only a few of the many issues discussed. But no decisions on where the investments would be made? No, no. There was the feeling by some of the faculty representatives that because the supplemental contributions were made by the faculty from their own resources, that they ought to have more to say about where it would be invested. Was there discussion about allowing employees to invest through other companies, like Fidelity or Calvert? Was that a decision the board made? Kendrick: That was a real issue because in the early days of my chairmanship. The attitude of the treasurer was that he knew best how to handle these funds. And that view, I must say, was supported by and large by the Board of Regents. The Regents regarded it their responsibility to manage the funds. The faculty felt that they were being forced to accept certain 346 Kendrick: investment policies with which they didn't necessarily agree. They also felt that everybody's benefit needs were not the same. Families with two working members were covered differently than a family with one wage earner. There is a whole array of different needs as far as the benefit coverage is concerned, and the policies governing the system didn't always recognize this. The policies and regulations were written at a time when it was assumed that there would be one wage earner per family who was male, and the family would be what is today called a nuclear family. The system was established on the basis that the Regents would manage the system for the benefit of the members, and all that the individual members need to do was to make contributions to that system. Well, society has evolved into a lot of different arrangements. Today there are many more two wage earners per family, likely to be covered by two benefit systems. You may also find two wage earners per family in the same system. Sc there was a constant need to pay attention to those changes and to update the rules and regulations, the standing orders affecting the system. Every change in the standing orders had to be submitted to the board for comment and either its approval or disapproval. The early struggle over the board's role as "governing" versus "advisory" was a tussle. The non-administrative members of the board were reluctant to recognize that their actions were administered by the President after obtaining regental action on proposals. The President was reluctant to accept the board's actions as final, which of course they couldn't be because the Regents were the real governing body as far as the system was concerned. The President did not want his authority compromised by having the board deal directly with the Board of Regents. Well, we finally achieved a compromise reluctantly agreed ro by the faculty and the staff representatives. The compromise resulted in a policy which stated that the President was obliged to report to the Regents whatever the board's position was on matters taken to the Regents. He couldn't just sit on the board's views and ignore them. We had to remind the President once that he had not taken an adverse view to the Regents, and it was kind of an embarrassment. I felt the new policy was a good one because it preserved the integrity of the advisory board, and recognized its independence from the University's administration. The role that I tried to assume as chair was not to stifle any discussion and not advocate from the chair the administration's point of view. Even though I was privy to most of the administration's views on benefit matters and often assumed from my own analysis the same administrative view. I nevertheless didn't use the chair to stifle dissenting opinion. 347 Kendrick: I felt that the administrative point of view was appropriately expressed by the vice president for personnel administration, who had the responsibility of administering the system. The benefits program reported to him as one of his responsibilities. The treasurer had no direct line relation to the administration of the University, but related directly to the Board of Regents. He was concerned with the investment policy and worked with the investment committee of the Regents. We had several Regents who were thoroughly familiar with the retirement system and took a very paternal interest in it. The principal Regent who was involved, I think, with the establishment of the system and who maintained careful oversight of it was Regent [Ed] Carter. So, a lot of decisions were made on the basis of how Regent Carter might view the situation because he was very persuasive with his fellow Regents about the retirement system. The rest of the Regents kind of deferred to him concerning retirement system issues. Lage: His point of view was that — ? Kendrick: I would say he was more conservative than perhaps most of the faculty would find acceptable. After we removed "governing" from the title of the board, it became the University of California Retirement System Board, with no modifier of board. Just a little name change, but you'd never know the hours of discussion we went through in trying to make that small change. But that goes with the academic system, I guess. UCRS Changes under President Gardner Kendrick: In due course, new governance of the University took over, and we had the David Gardner regime, with Ron Brady as the senior vice president for administration. With this change Ron took over the responsibility for the administration of the system. Both David's and Ron's points of view were very different from that of the Saxon administration. We also had a new treasurer. Herb Gordon. They recognized, or at least saw logic in the fact that the system's members ought to have an array of investment possibilities in their supplemental benefit program. They saw also that a lot of recommendations that the board members were making made a certain amount of sense, didn't cost a lot of money, and by agreeing to them it would neutralize some of the member dissatisfaction with the system. They were sympathetic to 348 Kendrick: what was called a cafeteria-style availability of benefits, because everybody, as I said earlier, did not have equal needs for the same kind of benefits. The system is well managed and the investment policy has produced one of the best- funded publicly funded systems in existence. The politicians in Sacramento recognized the well-funded nature of our system and expressed increased reluctance to keep contributing money into such a well-funded system when the state was short of money. So we experienced a year when the state borrowed money from the system by not making an allocation to it. That was an action which caused a lot of discussion by members of the board. I don't need to go into the details of the management of the system, but chairing the board was a rich experience for me. As a plant pathologist, I had no previous exposure to this kind of activity, but as I told the President, at my age it was an assignment in which I had a vested interest, and one which contributed another chapter to my varied experiences in the affairs of the University of California. Well, with the new administration of David Gardner, the system was liberalized. The attitude of those managing the benefit system was that the benefits should reflect what the members desired as long as the system maintained financial integrity, and I think that the benefit system is much enriched by that change in attitude. I resigned from the board in 1985, when I was having some recurrent health problems, and the chair of the board was designated to serve on the special committee to study disinvestment of assets from companies doing business in South Africa. I could see that this new assignment was going to be fairly demanding on the chair, and I was not yet operating at full steam. So I asked the President if he would relieve me of that responsibility and give it to somebody with more vigor. That's when the Vice President Brady was asked to chair the board. He also became the member of that special investment committee that was chaired by Chancellor Chuck Young. So my experience with the board ended in 1985. It was a good nine years, 1976-1985. It was an enriching experience for me. A good part of the years that I was the chair. Vice President Archie Kleingart ner, who was not a member of the beard, was responsible for administering the system, because he was the vice president for academic and staff personnel. It was perceived by President Saxon to be an academic and staff personnel service, not a financial or administrative function. Archie was expected to bring the administration's point of view to the board, and that's «-hen I decided that I would represent 349 Kendrick: the board rather than the administration, even though in other matters I was part of the University's administration. And I think that arrangement worked out pretty well. Lage: It sounds like a good system. I wonder whether, with Brady as the chair, that point of view continues. Kendrick: Well, I think it's a bit awkward, because Ron has the responsibility for administering the system, and he's also chair of the board that presumably advises the President. So he chairs the board that is advising him. Well, quite frankly, I wouldn't set it up that way. But then, I'm not the President of the University, and it's his prerogative to set the board up to serve his needs the best way he sees it. I suspect that the tension associated with the whole matter of divestment of investments in companies that do business in South Africa, which was really a fairly volatile issue in the University in the 1985-86 period, was somewhat persuasive in his appointment of the chair of the UCRS board, who was to serve on the disinvestment study committee. Ron had a terrific amount of experience in investments; when he was at University of Illinois, he had the responsibility of overseeing that university's investments. I think he was the vice president for finance or administration there. So he brought a good deal of experience and knowledge into his new assignment. My impression is that the board is run fairly smoothly, and the benefit program for all University employees is liberalized; it's quite well-funded. It's a good thing it was well-funded, with the recent major decline in the stock market [the "crash" of October 1987], It could experience a bit of a loss without jeopardizing any of its commitments to the members. I don't know specifically what kind of shape it's in now, but I do know it is the envy of a lot of retirement systems, and the total offering of benefits I think is quite good compared to other institutions. It was a genuine educational experience for me to try and guide discussions away from acrimony and towards positive accomplishments. And to the credit of the faculty representatives, who seemed early on to have a vendetta against the administration, they really reacted I thought very well. When David Feller would lose an issue, he'd say, "Well, I'll just bring it up again later." Lage: That's what it takes. 350 XVII OTHER NATIONAL RESOURCES PROGRAMS AND CONCERNS Changes in Administrative Responsibilities and Title, 1952-1983 Lage: Today's Friday the 13th, November 13th. our twelfth and possibly final session with Jim Kendrick. We're going to continue discussing programs that were actually outside the Division of Agriculture that you administered. Towards the end it was called the Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources. When did that change occur? Kendrick: That change occurred with the advent of David Gardner's administration, and the division really reflected the name of the title of the vice president. I don't believe that you would find any official action by the Regents on changing the name of the division. The Division of Agricultural Sciences, as I inherited it in 1968. was the only division in the University. It was a bit of an anomaly. I think the division designation was a result of the change from a single College of Agriculture to decentralized colleges at Berkeley. Davis, and Los Angeles, with four units of the Agricultural Experiment Station and Cooperative Extension. In earlier days the entire organization was referred to as the College of Agriculture, with deans serving as the chief administrative officers of the college. Harry Wellman was the first administrator of agriculture not to have the dean's title. His title was vice president- agricultural sciences, with the college and the Agricultural Experiment Station and Cooperative Extension reporting to him. And as I indicated in an earlier session. Harry Wellman created the free-standing director of the Agricultural Experiment Station for Paul Sharp, who was the first appointee to this position. This is a long answer to a simple question, but it is for the record, and since I've seen it garbled in other interpretations. I want to get it as clear as I remember. When Harry Wellman was moved up the ladder to vice president, under dark Kerr. they created the title University dean of 351 Kendrick: agriculture, still retaining that dean's title. In addition, it carried some responsibility as far as personnel appointments and department chair designations were concerned. So all personnel actions were not initially decentralized. [Dan Aldrich held the title University dean of agriculture from 1959-1963.] When Dan Aldrich was appointed chancellor of the Irvine campus, Maurice Peterson, who had been the director of the Agricultural Experiment Station under Dan Aldrich, succeeded him as University dean. In due course Clarence Kelly came from Davis, from the Department of Agricultural Engineering, to be the director of the experiment station. And — maybe if we go digging back through the records, we can find the time when it became a division and not a college, but I'm pretty sure it coincided with the decentralization to the Berkeley, Davis, and Los Angeles campuses of fairly autonomous roles to administer their own responsibilities, as far as college units were concerned. The respective college programs at Davis, Berkeley, and Los Angeles, and later at Riverside, were never a part of the division structure. So, in order to designate a university-wide activity, the division title was selected. There are no other major divisions in the University of California's organization. This is the only one. When Harry Wellman was still active as the vice president for President Charles Hitch and he was helping him put his administration together, I think the two of them, probably at Harry's urging — and with' some external clientele encouragement — decided to restore the vice president's title to the division's chief executive officer. And since Harry had had that title during his regime, I think he was easily persuaded that it was an appropriate title for the division's CEO. So I came on board as the vice president and not the University dean. The title was vice president for agricultural sciences, and it was then known as the Division of Agricultural Sciences. When Charlie Hitch finished his eight years as the President, and David Saxon succeeded him, he reorganized, reducing the number of vice presidencies, and began to consolidate some activities. Some of the areas of consolidation had formerly been the responsibilities that Vice President Robert Johnson had held during the Hitch regime. In addition to the responsibility for the Printing Department and University Relations, which I described in an earlier interview. President Saxon gave me the responsibility for the Natural Reserve System and the Governing Board of the Retirement System. So there were five activities added to my administrative responsibilities that were really not within the Division of Agricultural Sciences. With these changes, my title was changed and with tacit approval of 352 Kendrick: the President, and not with any official regental action, we began to refer to our organization as the Division of Agriculture and University Services, which reflected the change in my title. That term, university services, encompassed these other activities, including the Regents' security officer, which I described in an earlier interview. Most of these administrative responsibilities really belonged under an administrative vice presidency, but President Saxon didn't have an administrative vice president, as such. He had a vice president for business and finance, who was John Perkins, but he didn't serve as the administrative vice president. So, the division existed as the Division of Agriculture and University Services until David Gardner succeeded David Saxon. I visited with President Gardner during the interim period and suggested that I was happy to continue these responsibilities which were outside of agriculture, but I thought that they might appropriately be handled by one administrative officer who really had responsibility for other kinds of administrative service support systems. I told him I would be happy to relinquish them any time he wanted me to do so. At the same time, I said I was really interested in retaining administrative responsibilities for those units that had a relationship to biology and the natural resources, and that I also had a continuing interest in the retirement system. Let me back up and fill in on the retirement system. The statutes setting the retirement system up — the rules and regulations, Regents' bylaws — called for the chair of the retirement board to be a University officer, so there were not many choices as to who would chair it. It had to be one of the vice presidents, and since I had had it for a number of years, the easiest thing was to continue as the chair. And the Natural Reserve System was one program that I had a deep interest in, and I wanted to do something positive for it. Under the administrative structure that David Gardner was putting together, no other vice presidency lent itself to having the reserve system as its responsibility. He quickly agreed that that was appropriate, and that the subpart of my title, university services, was probably inappropriate. So, upon the announcement of his administrative staff, he changed my title, and the Regents approved that change, to the vice president, agriculture and natural resources. This made a lot of sense, since the Water Resources Center, and Natural Reserve System, and forestry were within my administration. And simultaneously, we changed the name of the division to the Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources. Probably through no real official act, but by continual reference to it, it came into being. 353 Lage: Did that change of title bring any reaction from your traditional clientele groups? Kendrick: No, they didn't react; I'm not sure they were even aware of it. As long as agriculture was in the program, it didn't seem to matter what we called ourselves. They're really more concerned about what we were turning out and how we were relating to their hours of anguish, and whether or not we were responsive to their needs than what our title was. They would have really raised a cry if the University was withdrawing its commitment to them. College of Natural Resources; Attempting to Establish a Special Emphasis for the Berkeley Campus Lage: You've always had forestry, which is sort of anomaly in the Agricultural Experiment Station, and in the Division of Agriculture. It's not really an agricultural concern — Kendrick: Well, that's partially true. Lage: Did it get the kind of attention that the forestry people think they deserve? Kendrick: I don't think it got the attention that the foresters felt was due them, although Henry Vaux, when he was the dean, and John Zivnuska, who succeeded Henry, maintained a pretty visible and active program. I think forestry kind of lost some of its ability to be near the top for attention when jobs became kind of tough to get in forestry. It went through a fairly long period of recession. Forestry programs used to emphasize forests as a source of lumber. Dean Vaux, however, could see that forests were more than just sources of lumber. Why it was retained under the Division of Agricultural Sciences in the University of California, I guess I don't really know, except that I don't think it was a big enough program to stand by itself. Whenever the decision was made to include it as a part of the division, it found a happy home for the most part. Early on, it was a department, then it was a school, and then under my administration it was incorporated into the College of Natural Resources, which was an amalgamation of the then College of Agricultural Sciences and the School of Forestry and Conservation. Lage: Was the creation of the College of Natural Resources at Berkeley something that you or your office or the statewide system had an influence in? 35A Kendrick: We think we did. [laughter] Lage : Let's talk about that for a minute. Kendrick: From the standpoint of the Agricultural Experiment Station, I had a good deal of concern about the lack of a defined purpose for the unit of the experiment station which was on the Berkeley campus. During the periods when we were trying to write academic plans and project needs for staffing and program emphasis in the overview statements that were produced by my office, we were trying to justify the existence in the experiment station of seemingly duplicated units, such as three departments of plant pathology, three departments of entomology, and three departments of soils, and two departments of nematology, and two departments of agricultural economics, and on and on. So there was an appearance of duplication within the division. Lage: Because of your various campuses. Kendrick: They were located on different campuses, that's true. It seemed logical to try and indicate that the three units of the experiment station had different programmatic emphases. They could be justified not only because of physical separation, but because of the size of the state, the size of the problems, and the diversity of the problems. Riverside, for instance, was close to the desert, and it could emphasize in its program dry land agriculture, desert agriculture, the interface between the urban community and agriculture, since it was in an area of heavy population explosion. Its program also concentrated on pest control, in which it had a big investment of people and resources. But its natural affiliation was dry land, desert, irrigated agriculture, and urban agriculture, plus citrus and subtropical agriculture. The Davis program was recognized as the comprehensive agricul tural school; everything was there. It had ornamentals — I must say that some of the Riverside program was in ornamentals also because it worked with nurseries in southern California. The nursery busi ness is large in southern California. Riverside also picked up some of the people in ornamentals who were at one time located at UCLA. So Riverside continued its program of research and service in the ornamental industry, too, but Davis has a Department of Ornamental Horticulture, and part of the UCLA people came up to that depart ment. But that didn't detract from locating a complementary program in southern California because these campuses are 450 miles apart. If you were to lay the eastern seaboard onto the California coast, you'd find that our state is equivalent to about five states. So there would be five experiment stations in a similar geographical distribution on the East Coast, when in California we had just one experiment station with three sub-units. 355 Kendrick: When writing this overview statement, after recognizing that Davis was the comprehensive agricultural campus where you could find all supporting disciplines for agriculture, and Riverside was recognized for its specialized programs including citrus and subtropical agriculture, that left us with a dilemma concerning Berkeley. Berkeley was the birthplace of the College of Agriculture. During Dean Hutchison's era, followed somewhat by Wellman's, there was movement of units from Berkeley to Davis. The College of Agricultural Sciences, as it was known at that time at Berkeley, was really a remnant of that earlier college. It was not a complete college of agriculture anymore. It had a Department of Nutritional Sciences, genetics, soils and plant nutrition, plant pathology, entomology and economics. Lage : Was there any particular reason that those things had remained while others went to Davis? Kendrick: I think size of the units kept them here, for one thing. Moving whole departments to Davis was not easily accomplished. There was a lot of tension about loss of resources from one campus to another, and there were people who wanted to move and people who didn't want to move. But nevertheless, units were moved, and those departments I listed were left here. Forestry was also left here as the School of Forestry. So there were two administrative units and two deans in the division on the Berkeley campus. Well, there were those of us, including the Berkeley chancellor, [Albert] Bowker at that time, who felt that it would be in the best interests of the Berkeley program to redefine its purpose and to improve the administrative efficiency by combining the School of Forestry and the College of Agricultural Sciences into one unit. The faculties of the two units were not thrilled by the administration's suggestion. The suggestion received semi-official status as a result of a report that the ad hoc committee, described in an earlier interview, consisting of McCorkle and Kendrick; Meyer, the Chancellor of Davis; Bowker, the chancellor at Berkeley; and Hinderacker, the chancellor of Riverside, commissioned. Harry Walker was asked to study the division's organization and program and to make recommendations as he saw their need for reorganizing the division. We placed no restrictions on him, so we expected some of the recommendations to exceed feasibility. And he made some wild ones. That became a document that frightened people. Lage: Did it suggest moving more departments to Davis? Kendrick: It suggested moving resources back and forth and made Riverside mad. By their interpretation, it didn't recognize the importance of Riverside, and it overemphasized the comprehensiveness of the Davis campus programs in agriculture. The report also suggested 356 Kendrick: the amalgamation of units of the division at Berkeley. It was really produced as a draft document, meant only for eyes of the committee, the five of us. But it quickly leaked and was spread rather widely. There was a pretty universal negative reaction among the faculty; they weren't going to have these five administrators reorganizing their future. But as a result of that report, the two units at Berkeley got together and decided, "Well, if we're going to be reorganized into a single unit, we'll do it on our terms." Gort [E. Gorton] Linsley was the dean of agriculture at the time, and John Zivnuska was dean of the School of Forestry. Henry Vaux was active in the program, and the chairman of the Department of Agriculture Economics, Dave (Hark, was also active in the amalgamation effort. They decided that it would be in the best interests of the Berkeley programs in the division to combine in a redefined program. These individuals were very, very helpful and quite cooperative in bringing that amalgamation about. They felt that it would result in a stronger and better defined program with a rejuvenation of student interest in the natural resources. Lage : Did it keep all the units, then, at Berkeley? Kendrick: They didn't suggest moving units at all. Lage: Just a redefining of general area and purpose. Kendrick: I think probably one of the toughest things to swallow as far as forestry was concerned was to change their status from a school to a department. Lage: Although it's such a small program now, it may have happened anyway. Kendrick: Well, it was a school with a single department. That's kind of an anomaly too, but the College of Chemistry is that way, as well. Lage: But I think they only had ten students a couple of years ago, ten graduate students. Kendrick: Well, they had more at the time this amalgamation was considered. The long and the short of this little soliloquy is that the faculty ultimately, with some expressed individual reluctance, agreed to the amalgamation. So the two units became the College of Natural Resources, and they sought a dean who would administer it because both Gort and John Zivnuska were at the end of their administrative assignments, and Gort was about to retire. It was during part of this period that Loy Sammet was the acting dean following Gort Linsley, and he further helped in trying to get the program unified. 357 Kendrick; Lage: Kendrick: Lage: Kendrick; There was also a period of time that Dick Doutt was acting dean- he came out of the Division of Biological Control, a division within the Department of Entomology at Berkeley. My memory is unclear about the exact sequence, but the first free-standing dean with a natural resource background was Bill [William E.] Waters. He was recruited from the USDA. Now, you still have a lot of departments in the college that wouldn't really fit under the name natural resources, it seems. At Berkeley, you're right, sciences? What do you do with nutritional Right, nutritional sciences, plus various agriculture departments. The faculty agreed to just accept the fact that nutritional sciences was to be included in the new college. Historically it was a very famous department. If not established by Agnes Fay Morgan, she was the one who put it on the map, a very renowned professor. It was not as much of an anomaly as it subsequently came to be under the College of Natural Resources, because home economics was what this department came out of, although we never really identified it as a home economics program. Lage: And part of the Agricultural Experiment Station mission. Kendrick: That's correct. The home economics program at the University of California emphasized nutritional sciences. Child development studies, design, and some other elements of a home economics program were the units that were moved from Berkeley to Davis and incorporated in their Department of Applied Behavioral Sciences. Dan Aldrich had something to do with these moves, as did Harry Wellman, I believe. Well, what really has occurred in establishing the College of Natural Resources is that, unhappily, only the name has changed, while the definition of the college still remains the same. It was my hope that the restructured College of Natural Resources would begin to staff their departments with the mission of the college in mind, that the departments would become a true natural resource support system. Soils, for instance, in my judgment, should emphasize soil problems associated with wildlands and forestry and not try to deal with commercial agriculture's problems. The plant pathology and the entomology 358 Kendrick: departments and economics, in particular, should focus their research, as far as experiment station support was concerned, on problems associated with forest, wildlands, and the like. That has really not happened. There has been some re- emphasis, particularly in agricultural economics — they changed their name to agriculture and resource economics, and they have economists who are resource economists, but so does the Department of Forestry and Conservation. Both departments dcn't need resource economists, in my judgment. Plant pathology really hasn't changed its emphasis and recognized that most of their efforts ought to be in support of the natural resource commitment. Genetics is a little tougher one to handle because it's the only Department of Genetics on the Berkeley campus, and it offers its genetics to students in the College of Letters and Science. That's part of what the Berkeley campus is agonizing over now: what to do with biology on the campus. Biology is in agriculture, in this College of Natural Resources; it's in the College of Letters and Science; it is a subject area where biotechnology is exploding in all areas. You find plant pathologists, botanists, plant physiologists, and entomologists, all dealing with biology and genetics. Members of the Department of Genetics and the unit of molecular plant biologists attached to the Department of Plant Pathology are all emphasizing their interest and activity in biotechnology and genetic engineering. Well, administrators see this dispersion and presumed lack of coordination — Lage : It's not tidy. Kendrick: It's not tidy, you're right. [laughter] Somehow, you want to put them together. Well, the best way to group them is to build a building, and put them together with a common plumbing system. Then you begin to see natural alliances and cooperative programs develop. So now Berkeley is in the process of building a building for this group of molecular biologists. This will result in some realignment of individuals in different departments. Then, you agonize over what to call the new organization — a college or a superdepartment? I haven't any solution for that dilemma. I think that the future of the Berkeley campus's Agricultural Experiment Station unit will be best served by continuing to develop an emphasis in the natural resources, so that it is a program of activity and not just a family name. Right now, in my judgment, it's kind of a shotgun wedding. 359 Lage: That more or less coincides with what Henry Vaux has suggested in his oral history. Kendrick: His impression too? Lage: Yes. He had great hopes for it but thinks not much has come of it, in terms of a changing direction or rethinking the program. Kendrick: That's true. Now they have a new dean. Dean Wilford Gardner. And I have high hopes that his administration with his experience and his commitment will move it further in this direction. He will certainly, I believe, get my successor's support for movement in that direction. Lowell Lewis, too, shares this viewpoint. Lage: It seems like there's tremendous conservatism there — Kendrick: Well, it's very difficult to get people to change, because their professional reputations are built over many years of research in their specialties. The only way to bring about significant change is to use vacant positions and fill them with people with the appropriate disciplinary backgrounds and a commitment to the new mission. Rapid change could only occur if a major number of vacancies in the faculty positions occurred over a two to five year span. It's asking quite a bit to change the research interests and even the teaching interests of a person who has been working for fifteen or twenty years with the cotton people, or potato people, and emphasizing their own disciplinary interest. Because usually faculty vacancies occur only at the rate of a few each year, you make these kinds of changes only at the margins of the total program. If you've only got one or two vacancies occurring every year, you better hope that you will have a minimum of five to ten years and a plan to follow before you can really remold a college program. There are no real opportunities to make drastic changes in the academic structure because we're built upon a security of employment system. And that kind of defeats some people in even starting to make changes. I've never been one who thought this fact was reason enough to not try to make changes. I figure if you're going to learn to walk, take one step at a time. Pretty soon you'll be running. But if you don't start walking that just delays the end of the race. So my urging was always, "Let's get on with it," and don't be defeated with the fact that you can only make minor changes at the margins. Those margins will shrink more rapidly than you think at first. I'm not despairing or giving up because I think that the campus administration at Berkeley wants a stronger unit in the college. They want a unit that makes sense. Leadership is what is required to bring that about. 360 The Natural Reserve System Defining Goals, Building Campus Support through an Academic Planning Process Lage: Kendrick: Lage: Kendrick: Shall we turn now to the Natural Reserve System? in here. It seems to fit I don't recall the exact year when I took this on; we would have to look in the records. You didn't take it on in '68, when you came aboard? No. It was under the vice president for university relations under President Hitch. It came to me when David Saxon's administration started, which was in 1975. It was then known as the Natural Land and Water Reserve System. I was not unacquainted with the system and thought that it had a lot of promise. When I started to work with Roger Samuelsen [director of the unit] I asked for an academic plan for the system. I wanted to know where the unit was going and what its purpose was. It seemed to me that a good part of the activity up to then was the acquisition of land. Because those acquisitions were Regents' items, those of us who attended Regents' meetings regularly were aware that there was a fair amount of acquisition activity by the reserve system. It also had a fairly large grant from the Ford Foundation, which required matching funds, to support, the acquisition of new property. But I really wanted to know if there was a limit to the desired acquisitions. How many- properties did we need? What was the goal, and what was the purpose? The system had a faculty advisory committee that was kind of self-perpetuating. The members usually nominated themselves; they would get their respective chancellors to make the recommendation to the President, and then the President appointed the committee. There also was no stated term of service for the members, so they served as long as they were willing to do so. The system was started under President Clark Kerr, who recognized the need to preserve some of these fast-disappearing unique habitats in the state of California, where biologists were conducting research. The idea of setting up a University-wide system, I think was recognized to be that of Professor Ken Norris's, who was professor of natural history/natural science at Santa Cruz. He was a former UCLA professor who went to Santa Cruz and an inspiring person. Of course, Mildred Mathias. professor of botany emeritus from UCLA, is also regarded as one of the patron saints of the Natural Reserve System. I think the 361 Kendrick: University owes a deep debt of gratitude to Ken Norris and Mildred Mathias for the concept and the tenacity to stay with the idea of establishing the system and developing it into a viable, useful program. So, I was quite attracted to the system. I could see the need. As a biologist myself, and one who had minored as an undergraduate in genetics, I knew the value of evolutionary studies and the necessity to retain natural land reserves for these kinds of studies. It was a pleasant assignment, as far as I was concerned, and one which I felt I could administer with an understanding of biology. Up to the time I took over, the program, because of the acquisition of properties through grants and gifts, had been treated by most campuses as a grant program. More often than not, the local administration was assigned to the gifts officer, an administrative officer of the campus who didn't really pursue academic justifications for these programs. And other faculty members, at least, regarded the program as one for particular faculty interests. I felt that that was not the way to sustain a long-term commitment to this valuable program. Lage: Would the land often come via a faculty connection, a particular faculty who had a contact and — ? Kendrick: Yes. We had a particularly lively faculty member at Riverside, who [laughs] I accused of wanting to get the entire state of California in the land reserve system. Bill Mayhew was a professor of biology there who continues to be active in the program. He was always bringing to our attention possibilities of more properties to bring into the system in order to make it more representative of the diverse ecosystems of the state. Roger Samuelsen spent a major share of his time working with people who were interested in negotiating terms of their gifts and grants and with agencies and foundations in trying to interest them in making grants to enhance the program. The program has a little state money in it, but not much. It functions almost completely on gifts, grants, and donations. I felt what was needed to bring the system better academic recognition and therefore improved justification for regularly appropriated money for its core support was to develop an academic plan and have it approved by the regular academic process on each campus. I wanted the faculty at large to buy into the program. We needed faculty to indicate their interest in the program as a valuable academic program for each campus and, therefore, one that should be supported just as are some of the other facilities that support the academic offerings on the campuses. 362 Kendrick: I felt that if we could get the commitment of the faculty at large to the value of the program, then the chancellors would be easier to convince of the system's academic value. I reasoned that it would then be easier to obtain their commitment to use resources at their disposal for partial support of the system. Now, some chancellors were more supportive than others of the systems units that reported to them. But I really wanted all eight chancellors who had some responsibility for these outdoor laboratories to see them as necessary facilities where we offered unique opportunities for students to experience and study natural biology. Lage: It sounds like a lot of politicking would need to take place to get that kind of commitment. Kendrick: Well, it didn't come overnight. We set about doing that, working through the advisory committee that had representatives from each of the campuses. Lage: Did the advisory committee take to this idea? Kendrick: Yes. There was absolutely no reluctance to do this. In fact, the strong supporters were both Ken Norris and Mildred Mathias. I think that the core staff in Roger's office, Jeff Kennedy, Dan Cheatham, and Bob Dering, supported it in principle, but I'm not sure but what they felt that it might weaken their own position in the overall administration of the program. It was never really expressed to me that way, but I have a sense that once you build up a university- wide unit with central control, then the more control you give away to the faculty, the more threatening it is to the centralized autonomy. But as far as I was concerned, this change was absolutely essential because I could see that in the long run, the Natural Reserve System was not going to be at the top of the priority of needs in the times of tight money if it lacked a firm academic purpose. And the only way to get that was to have it recognized as an integral part of the academic program offering on the campuses. I won't describe the details of how the system is admininstered, other than to say that there are about thirty-six properties. Not all are owned by the University. Some of them are under use agreements between the University and the Nature Conservancy, or the National Park Service, or the Forest Service. They own the property, and we negotiate basic long-term use agreements with them, so that when experiments are set up, they're not in jeopardy of being dismantled or pilfered or destroyed due to neglect or changes in ownership. We have commitments for a longer period of time for our work. 363 Kendrick: Each of these properties is assigned to a campus to administer, which is done by a campus manager for the respective reserve system units. The properties that are of sufficient size have a resident manager to not only oversee the work program, but to keep trespassers away and make arrangements with students and research faculty to do their work at periodic times. Well, that arrangement works out pretty well, but it runs on a shoestring. The system depends upon campus commitment to support the local programs. All the support that is needed can not come from allocations from Roger's office. There is some funding available in the reserve system's office to allocate to the campuses for the reserves under their responsibility, but there's never enough. Never enough to support the total program or all of the people. So a lot of the activity is kind of an up- and-down activity, which depends on whether a faculty member using a reserve is funded through NSF [National Science Foundation] or some other granting agency. The system has compiled a good record. There has been a lot of student use of the facilities. Students who have been privileged to experience the on-site teachings of a Ken Norris or a Mildred Mathias, and some of their colleagues, really have had a rich experience. I kept telling Roger that the Natural Land and Water Reserve System was the best-kept secret of the University of California. Let me finish talking about the academic plan. That process took much longer than I had hoped. We ultimately got plans developed and exposed to campus educational policy committees, then up through the chancellors' offices. But it came at different speeds through different campuses, and while we have in form what is called an academic plan, it never really totally satisfied me. I think it fell a bit short of being a standard academic plan. But the system was a lot better known following this exercise than it was earlier. In addition to the development of an academic plan, I felt that the program also needed an academic leader. Roger would admit that, while his commitment to the program was solid, he was not a biologist. Lage: He's a lawyer. Kendrick: He's a lawyer. But he was not someone who could sit down and relate to faculty in biology or life science. I felt the need to have a Special Assistant for External Affairs and for Development. I asked Roger to assume that role for me half-time and reduce his commitment to the Natural Reserve System by that amount of time. He agreed to do so. 364 If Kendrick: The advisory committee saw this same need, and they agreed to release Roger for that amount of time. That left some support for a new position. Consequently, we sought an associate director for the Natural Reserve System who would be an academic person and would have the responsibility for the academic program. I felt this was really a crucial move because we needed somebody from that systemwide office who could relate to the faculty on their own terms. That was accomplished with the approval of the advisory committee, who participated in the selection process. That's when Ron Carroll came on board as the associate director of the system. He had a background in entomology and biological control. That was one more step toward emphasizing that the Natural Reserve System was an academic program and not just a land acquisition or grant program. Publicizing the "Best-Kept Secret" in the University Kendrick: Now, one of the things that I felt was a big deficiency was the fact that, as I said, the system was one of the best-kept secrets of the University of California; I didn't think it was tooting its horn enough. It was not utilizing techniques that we in agriculture felt were essential, that of telling people about our programs and what contributions we were making for their benefit. So I urged Roger to develop in the reserve system office the capacity to publish a regular newsletter and to get it to the faculty. I wanted the newsletters to describe interesting and exciting things that were going on at these reserves, who was involved, and what the significance of the work could be. So after a long gestation process, the Transect emerged, and when it came out initially it was too academic. They tried to dress it up; it wasn't newsy and brief. So it has gone through some evolutions, and the recent editions I've seen come pretty close to being what at least my notion of what a newsletter ought to be. Lage: You said initially it was too academic? Kendrick: Yes. It was put together by the central staff, and they wanted to be sure that it was edited right down to the last "t"; it was kind of scholarly and too long. The staff's concept of what it ought to include and my concept of what it ought to include were different. 365 Lage: I'm just trying to get a sense of your role in something like this — would you have, when the newsletter came out, conveyed your impression of it? Kendrick: I sure did. Lage: And say, "Let's make some changes."? Kendrick: Yes. To Roger, and done in a polite way. My goal was to get somthing short, sweet, and snappy before the faculty. I felt that, if we're trying to generate faculty interest, enthusiasm, and commitment to the reserve system they needed to know that these facilities were available to them to work on. Since Cooperative Extension produced newsletters we had help for the system's people to create an informative publication. And subsequently that was done — we utilized some of the staff of the California Agriculture in helping to put some of the natural reserve material together. Roger ultimately added an editor to his staff, and the publication began to improve. So the system's program began to move into an academic mode. I really had hoped that a much more comprehensive faculty outreach program would be conducted. I had visions of the associate director going from campus to campus and describing what the reserve system was and how the reserves could fit into any of the many ecological studies conducted by our biology facilities. I also hoped to stimulate more student use of the reserves. I felt that there was some feeling on the campuses that particular reserves had only specific faculty interest and were regarded as individual outdoor laboratories. Lage: And did these individuals also see them as their exclusive laboratories? Kendrick: Not really, but I think there was a reluctance for the non- involved faculty to get into the reserves for their own teaching and research purposes. The Riverside campus had more reserve properties assigned to its management than any other campus. Davis, when I took over, had none. We always wanted the Davis chancellor to commit himself to support the system, and ultimately, the Davis campus did pick up a couple of reserves and the responsibility for them. The chancellor's point of view changed from one of skepticism and disinterest in the program to one of commitment and support. Their first property was acquired largely because of the interest of Professor G. Ledyard Stebbins, a rather famous geneticist. Lage: I thought he was at Berkeley. Kendrick: He was formerly at Berkeley. 366 Lage: And then he moved to Davis? Kendrick: Yes. When he was a very young assistant professor. I enrolled in his course in evolution. It was quite an experience. I was there with mostly graduate students, and I was a junior at the time. So the competition was extremely keen. The only tests we had that semester was a mid-term paper and the final examination. We didn't have the foggiest notion of what he was going to ccver as far as the final examination was concerned, and the whole grade really depended on that final exam. He was often six miles ahead of the class because he was such an enthusiastic assistant professor who was full of his subject. Lage: Did he convey it well? Kendrick: I didn't think so, not in those days. I think later on after he gained experience in teaching, he improved, but he remained a University character, but his contributions to his subject matter and to the University were renown. And he did provide us with a Natural Reserve System entree to the Davis campus — the Stebbir.s Cold Canyon Reserve, up in the Putah Canyon area. The present chancellor at Davis, Chancellor [Theodore] Hullar. is very committed to the program. I think that we now have a chancellor who [laughs] will be hard to keep up with, as far as the reserve system is concerned, because he is a naturalist himself and he recognizes the value of these properties and the threat that they are under by urbanization and development. Lage: At this time is there any sense of collecting properties even if there isn't specific interest right at the moment, but with the idea that you need to save representative areas for the future? Kendrick: There is a little interest. One of the consequences of being persistent with the advisory committee and with Roger, in urging them to give us some idea of what the ultimate goals are, was being able to plan to acquire missing representatives of California's ecosystems. They busily got to work under Ken Morris's leadership, and produced a master plan for acquisitions to the reserve system. The plan described what I think is the ultimate system. There are some properties in northern California that will be desirable to acquire, either through use arrangements or by acquisition directly. The optimum system would contain representative habitats of the diverse land and water environments that exist in California, and since we have such a diverse state, it takes a lot of habitats to cover all the uniqueness. There is an end in sight, and I take some credit for trying to force that issue, so that it wouldn't appear that there was no end to the acquisition activities of the system. 367 Kendrick: That plan was accompanied with a plan to staff and manage these various properties. The plan called for a major commitment of resources, one that I tried mightily to get approved by the President. I never was quite successful. President Gardner was quite sympathetic, and he said one of these days he would put it into his budget. But he said to me, "I don't want to go piecemeal for this. I want to wait until the program is well- conceived, and we know what the total cost will be, and then let's go for broke." That makes perfectly good sense to me, except that there are times when very urgent things come up, and they keep displacing the ones you can put off until next year or until the year following. There now exist well-developed management plans. Roger and his crew are quite good at this. They did a lot of consulting with campus administrations. That was part of the groundwork needed to gain significant campus commitment. I know that imposing a centrally written plan on the campuses without room for negotiation or changes is not the way to gain cooperation. So Roger and his staff approached each campus by saying, "Well, now let's develop something that's agreeable to you and that you think you can handle." I wanted Roger to work with the campuses' academic vice chancellors or some other academic program coordinator and to stay away from the business offices. I wanted the plan to be accepted as part of the commitment of each campus's academic administration. And that was done. So I feel pretty good about the plan; it just happens to be little too rich for the resources at the moment. But it's not an extravagant plan in my judgment, and it outlines a management system worthy of this valuable system. The system is not only available to University of California students or faculty, but it's also available to anyone who has a legitimate need for working on these properties. And it does, in fact, draw people from other institutions and school systems. The Faculty Advisory Committee Kendrick: I think we can finish by describing how I hoped to restructure the advisory committee. Since it had gotten to the point where it was nearly self- perpetuating, I felt that more people needed to serve on the committee so that more people would be aware of its program and its value. So I asked the members of the advisory committee if they wouldn't consider altering the manner in which nominations for membership on the committee were made and have them come from each campus's Academic Senate's Committee on Committees. I proposed that the nomination be forwarded to each chancellor so that there would also be administrative support for the nominees. I recommended that the President 368 Kendrick: retain the right to appoint two or three persons in addition, so that he would feel some responsibility for the committee, rather than being asked to rubber stamp an already accomplished action. The advisory committee ultimately adopted and modified the new plan only slightly. I felt there needed to be active participation as far as the President was concerned, because the committee needed to have a business office representative and a legal representative. These representatives would not necessarily be identified by the faculty process. And that, I think, has been done. I also wanted the terms designated specifically, so that there would be staggered three-year or four-year terms, or whatever seemed desirable, with permission to reappoint for one more term. But after that, you had to go off the committee. Lage: Is that standard operation for most committees of this sort? Kendrick: Most academic committees have that kind of arrangement. Well, it finally got through most of the approval process, and I understand that it has now been adopted. Whether it's operative yet, I don't know. I hope that it is because I think it's a necessary adjunct to the rest of the changes in trying to bring the reserve system into the core of the academic offering of the University of California. When these changes are completed and accepted, then I think its future will be secure. The other thing that happened during the time I was working with the system was to change the long name. Originally it was Natural Land and Water Reserves System, a tongue twister. Well, there was a lot of agony expended on trying to find a successor name to that. Roger had an automobile license plate with NLWRS on it. He checked out several acronyms to see if they were free to be used, and he found out that the Natural Reserve System [MRS] was one that was not spoken for, so he said, well, he would be agreeable to that name. [laughter] So ultimately — this was an official regental action — we did change the name to the University of California's Natural Reserve System, a much easier name to handle. It also fits well within the name of the division. So I felt good about the reserve system. I think it's a good program, and I enthusiastically support it. I tried to set things in motion to secure its future, but that remains to be seen. 369 Harold Walt, David Gardner, and State Funds for Wildland Research Lage : I had the impression when we talked about the Wildland Research Center that perhaps David Gardner wasn't as supportive of wildland-natural reserve types of programs as he was of agriculture. Can you elaborate? Kendrick: Oh. yes. The wildlands program, as I think I've referred to it earlier, through a good portion of my administration was an orphan. It had a little annual support but not enough to accomplish very much, When Harold Walt became president of the State Board of Forestry he decided that he was going to make a major commitment to increase support for the state's forestry and wildlands program. He laid the groundwork for this multimillion- dollar increase in resources through special symposiums. And in the process of doing this, he also put on his political hat and began to cover the bases of political support. Well, realizing that the University's forestry and wildlands program had not been able to generate sense of urgency needed to get the state funding augmented, when this opportunity came along, I figured that we might as well go as far as we could with it. We had plenty of planning studies that outlined what wildlands needed. It is relatively easy to convince people that we need money for crisis-type programs, such as toxic and hazardous waste control programs or the IPM program which promised to take care of the excessive use of pesticides. But forestry and wildland programs don't qualify as "crisis- type" needs. In times of limited resources they usually could be put off until next year. There's no real crisis involved; so a type of creeping paralysis takes over because of continuous neglect. Well, one of the major issues was whether the State Board of Forestry should require timber cutting plans for privately owned oak hardwoods in the foothills. The owners were not thrilled about the State Board of Forestry having anything to say about how they cut wood in these foothills. There was very little information about the effects of harvesting the oaks in the oak- wood forests, on the rate of regeneration, wildlife habitats and watershed yields. So there was a clear need for much more research on the woodlands in the foothills of California. These questions formed the basis for a report on needed research for these wildland areas. Hal Walt was enthusiastic about the proposed program and began to lobby in favor of it. He asked me if he shouldn't talk to President Gardner. And I said, "Well, if you insist, I'll try 370 Kendrick: to arrange a meeting." For political reasons. I felt that David should meet with Hal, and I found that Bill Baker, our vice president for university relations and budget, also agreed with me. The meeting was held and Hal politely told the President that he would support the budget request for the proposed program if the President would put it into his budget request. He also wanted Dave Gardner to speak at one of the symposia that he was arranging in an attempt to gain legislative and the governor's support for a major increase in budgetary support for research in the wildland field. David ultimately agreed to talk at the symposium held in Sacramento. I participated as a speaker at the first of the two symposia, as did Henry Vaux, that was held in Yosemite. David's talk was supportive of the program, but I detected that he kind of resented Hal Walt's intrusion into the regular budgetary process. Hal wasn't modest in what he was requesting. He wanted us to put into our budget a million dollar increase for the program. That was a tall order in terms of the total research budget increase, especially when David had to consider some other critical University needs such as faculty salaries, library- expansion, student financial aid, increasing teaching assistants, and a whole array of unavoidable increases. David felt that this wildland issue wasn't quite as important as some of these other critical needs. Lage: And did he feel it might eventually wind up competing with other University needs? Kendrick: Sure. Absolutely. When our budget is put together, we start with a bottom line, a figure that we think the governor is going to approve, and then we start putting the ingredients together adding up to that total. We start with the most important and unavoidable items, and just go down the line. I am sure that the President had difficulty trading off this million dollar request for wildlands against some other highly desirable requests. He didn't feel that he wanted his options politically maneuvered. But Hal had connections in the governor's office, and the governor had made some promises to him. We decided that we really couldn't afford to have Hal unhappy with us. So I think it was not a case of David Gardner thinking that the program was not justified or was inappropriate, or anything like that. It was a case of removing some degrees of freedom that David felt he needed to decide what budget items should go forth. Lage: I see. So the impression I got about Gardner probably wasn't accurate, that maybe his interest in the natural resources area wasn't as strong as his interest in agriculture. 371 Kendrick: No, I don't think that's the correct interpretation. It's just a matter of priorities in terms of interests. His knowledge of the agricultural interests I think were probably expressed in a more organized manner than they were in the natural resource area. ff It is pretty easy for me to identify fifteen or twenty people in agriculture who come close to representing the diversity of agricultural interests in California, but it's much more difficult to do the same sort of thing in the forestry or in the wood products area. In forestry and wildlands there are almost as many interest groups as agriculture has, and they are no more related than some of the agricultural interests are related. The interest groups include the fisheries and wildlife people, the lumbering interests, the recreational people, the developers who are interested in developing second home sites in the woodland areas, and the furniture manufacturers in southern California who use the wood products. Lage: And the environmentalists. Kendrick: Yes. There is a wide diversity of interests that I was never able to relate to in the same way that I could in agriculture. I think it could have been done if I'd worked at it. It's a challenge to the new vice president to do a better job with that sort of thing than I did. [laughs] But the program was augmented, both through the state's Department of Forestry and the University budget. We got a significant augmentation for the program and had an infusion of money such as we'd never had in a long time. So presently there is a viable program in wildlands research and extension. It is under the responsibility of the director of the Agricultural Experiment Station, and he has identified a program leader who has a half-time assignment. I felt pleased that we got it approved, even though it did take a little political arm-twisting to get it. I'm not even sure the governor was all that happy that he'd made the commitment to support it, but he had a significant political supporter in Hal Walt, who was calling in some of his lOUs, and got it through. So you have to be ready to play your cards when you get them, and when the table stakes are right. I don't think that David Gardner was reluctant to support the program and have its budget augmented. If you pressed him, he would just say, "Well, sure it's a good program, an appropriate one for us to have, but I'm suffering in some other areas. " 372 XVIII NATIONAL LEADERSHIP ACTIVITIES IN AGRICULTURE Agricultural Research Policy Advisory Committee Lage: Shall we turn to your activities on the national level? Kendrick: All right. The principal national activity that I got involved with is the Division of Agriculture in the National Association of State Universities and Land Grant Colleges. My first exposure to the national scene of agriculture occurred early in my vice presidency in 1968, when I received a request from the secretary of agriculture, Orville Freeman, to serve on a committee to review the agricultural research in the USDA's Office of Experiment Station Research and its program in the states. One of the co-chairmen of that committee was Cliff [Clifford M.] Hardin, who at that time was the president of the University of Nebraska, and later became the secretary of agriculture. Ke was an ag economist by background. The assignment of that committee was to take a look at agricultural research that was supported by the USDA, as we've done periodically, it seems to me ad infinitum. These exercises take place whenever there is a groundswell of concern expressed about the appropriateness of the program. That committee was my introduction to some of the deans of agriculture in other institutions, as well as a representative from the Federal Office of Management and Budget, which was then called the Bureau of the Budget. It was that study committee where I first became acquainted with Russ McGregor, as I mentioned earlier, who I asked to serve as my special assistant for program planning and analysis and budgeting. The result of that study was the recommendation that the secretary establish a committee called the Agricultural Research Policy Advisory Committee, and it was commonly referred to as ARPAC. It became a fairly unwieldly committee, as it ultimately was formed because, while the idea was fine and justified, it seemed like every unit in agriculture wanted to be represented en Secretary of Agriculture Orville Bentley presents Agriculture Science Leadership Award to Jim Kendrick, Phoenix, Arizona, November 10, 1986. Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources Council of Directors - Council of Statewide Assistant Directors, Sacramento, Spring 1983. Front TOW, left to right: Jim Meyers, Jean Lyons, Jerry Siebert, Nancy McLaughlin, Rosie Powell, John Anderson, Jim Kendrick. Back row, left to right: Warren Schoonover, Lowell Lewis, Gene Stevenson, Dave Schlezel, Charley Hess, Lew Weathers, Harold Myers. 373 Kendrick: the committee. That's been characteristic of agriculture, as well as its clientele groups; nobody speaks for agriculture in its totality. There are so many well-organized special interest groups that they do not give up their prerogative to have their own representation at the highest level of whatever government agency is involved with their welfare. So by the time we got ARPAC put together, it had every agency in the USDA with any resemblance of a research program sitting on the committee. Then, when you look at state representation, the South, the West, the North, and the East would never agree to having just one representative for all regions, so we had four regional research representatives. Cooperative Extension was not a major concern of this committee, but it convinced the secretary's representative that it should also have a membership on the committee. Regional representation, however, was avoided for extension. Directors of the Agricultural Experiment Stations did not really agree to have deans and vice presidents act as spokespeople for them, but I served briefly on the committee, in some capacity that I don't remember. I think I probably was the western representative for the overall administrators of land grant agricultural programs. But it was very difficult to have a committee of this size engage in meaningful discussions concerning research goals, policies, and management. Lage: How large a committee did it end up being? Kendrick: Well, I don't remember, but it seemed to me every time we had a committee meeting, there were about thirty-five or forty people in attendance. It became a show and tell experience. People came from all over the U.S. and were there for about a day or a day and a half. And the agencies in the USDA felt that they had to filibuster the committee to show the members what they were doing, so they'd monopolize the agenda. It was really a frustrating experience. It would produce reports, but they were staff-written. There was precious little opportunity to do what the people who generated the idea felt had to be done. So ARPAC, in due course, fell by the wayside. But a successor committee has emerged, and it was a product of the Farm Act, which is the act that governs the appropriations and the programs of the USDA. That came forth about 1977, and created legislative authority to establish an agricultural research advisory group. I guess it's still concerned mainly with research, even though Cooperative Extension sits on the committee. The assistant secretary for science and education is one co-chair. The other co-chair comes from the land grant group and is usually a dean of agriculture somewhere in the states. 374 The National Association of State Universities and Land Grant Colleges' Division of Agriculture Kendrick: Getting back to the national association — when I first started going to those meetings, I was overwhelmed by the numbers cf people who would attend the meetings. I ultimately became aware of the fact that it is the national organization of public university administrators in all areas of the institutions' administrative units above department chairs. Lage : It doesn't just deal with agriculture. Kendrick: No. All areas. It is really run by the presidents of the association's university members, but there are sections organized for academic vice presidents, student relations officers, public information officers, university relations officers, graduate deans, and budget officers, for example. I can't identify all the units that make up the national association, but it's a large collection of administrators of the many diverse university programs. A meeting will have anywhere from 2,500 to 3,500 people in attendance. So there are not many places where it can meet. The association always meets one year in Washington, D.C., and the alternate year in some other city in the United States. The Division of Agriculture within the association is the largest division, and it's large because it has a lot of these units that I've described. It has an experiment station section, a resident instruction section, an extension section and, now, a council of administrative heads of agriculture. When I attended my first meetings, I had a hard time figuring out which section I belonged to, if any, and who all the people were. I had noticed that some of my colleagues were wandering around also, going to this section meeting or that section meeting. It turned out that these were the deans, vice presidents, or deputy chancellors who had the overall responsibility for agricultural programs back at their state institutions. In some institutions Cooperative Extension does not report to the agricultural administrator. It sometimes reports to a university extension officer, or some other route to the president. But in a traditional setting, the Cooperative Extension director or associate director reports to the agricultural dean or comparable officer. At the University of California, both research and extension report to the vice president, but resident instruction is a campus responsibility. There are no resident instruction matters that come to the attention of the vicn president for any ki:-.d of action or advice. That is another difference in the University 375 Kendrick: of California's agricultural administration from other institutions where the resident instruction associate dean reports to the dean, and the dean is the overall responsible administrative officer for the total agriculture program of the institution. Creating the Council of Administrative Heads of Agriculture (CAHA) Kendrick: When I first began attending these land grant meetings in 1968, the group that was called the overall deans were kind of on the outside looking in because all the business of the division was handled by the established sections, and there was no section for the "overall deans." The overall deans didn't have any place to go; they were wandering. Some of my colleagues at that time were Dean Charlie Palm of Cornell, Provost Russ Larson of Penn State, Dean Orville Bentley of Illinois, Dean Elmer Kiehl of Missouri, Dean Glenn Pound of Wisconsin, Dean Bill Hueg of Minnesota, Dean Doyle Chambers of LSU, and Roy Lovoron of North Carolina. Of that group, Charlie Palm, Elmer Kiehl, Orville Bentley, Russ Larson, and I decided that since we had overall responsibility for agriculture at our home institutions, we ought to have a similar relationship in the association with these sections which produced recommended programs for the division. So, through politicking — it took several years to bring it into being — we ultimately were able to get the division to accept a new section, called the Council of Administrative Heads of Agriculture, referred to as CAHA, That was really a major step forward as far as making the Division of Agriculture an effective and respected member of the association. Up until that time, the main function of the association as far as the division was concerned was to approve the proposed annual budgets developed by the Experiment Station Section for the Hatch Act and by the Cooperative Extension Section for the Smith-Lever Act and then forward the requests to the secretary of agriculture. The sections submitted their budget requests to the Division of Agriculture for approval and the division then forwarded them to the association's executive committee and ultimately to the association senate for action. To a number of us, these early budget requests were an embarrassment, because they were so unrealistic. Moreover, the two section requests often had no relationship with each other, so it was difficult to determine what the division's priority ranking was. The association was formed one hundred years ago as an agricultural organization concerned with the appropriation and use of federal funds, so the subject matter was appropriate. It was the methodology which had gotten out of control. 376 Lage: So the association had begun as an agricultural organization and then expanded to include public university administrators in general? Kendrick: And then expanded into a number of sections incorporating University administrative officers. The Division of Agriculture was a very active member of the association, because it was the only national organization representing agricultural administration at the land grant institutions. It had a lot of business besides budget development with the office of the secretary of agriculture and the agricultural committees of the Congress. The group of us who wanted to establish a section for the administrative heads of agriculture and to place it into a leadership role for the division were able to develop an acceptable set of bylaws and regulations that recognized that CAHA would provide the leadership for the division. That was no small doing too because somebody else had to be displaced for that to take place. We constructed an executive committee in which the representation from this Council of Administrative Heads would be well represented. In fact, we originally constructed it so that it would have a majority of membership on the division's executive committee. It's been subsequently changed to a Board of Agriculture, and I don't think that the Council of Administrative Heads still has the majority member ship. But the leadership of the division still comes from CAHA. CAHA* s Leadership in Budget Development for the Division Kendrick: Well, one of the most significant accomplishments resulting from changing the administration of the division was that we got mere sense introduced into the budget development. It became a program-designed budget, and not just a wish list of add-ons that had become ridiculous in their requests. It was easier to take that budget to the executive committee of the association and have them understand and approve it. than it was with the non- programmatic budget requests. The executive committee of the association is designed to place the presidents of these land grant and state universities in total control. The association's policies are determined by the senate which is composed of the presidents and representatives of the divisions, councils, and sections. the senate is large and unwieldly so the association's executive committee has become its major governing body. I could see as I listened to many of my colleagues at other institutions who did not have a close relationship with the presidents of their 377 Kendrick: institutions, that there was almost an adversarial relationship between the presidents and the agricultural deans, with the presidents not understanding or not supporting agriculture in the manner in which the deans felt it should be. Some presidents did not have agricultural programs at their institutions so they naturally were less than enthusiastic about some of the proposals coming from the Division of Agriculture. Many of the members of the executive committee felt that the division completely ignored the needs of the total institution and were unrealistic in their agriculturally centered requests. This was an environment which needed to be changed so that the division could gain some respect of the association as a whole. Not all of the presidents were negative about the agricultural programs. In fact, some had agricultural backgrounds and were quite supportive and some of these presidents were on the association's executive committee from time to time. Among the changes in the bylaws of the division was a provision that each of the four regions of the United States would have the responsibility for leadership of the division every fourth year. I started out as a secretary for the division and became the vice chairman, and then the chair. One of the important offices that needed to be filled was a division representative to serve on the executive committee of the association. Lage: Was that something new? Kendrick: No, that was always the case. The executive committee of the association was chaired by the past president of the association. Following my chairing the division, I became the division's representative to the executive committee of the association, and served a three-year term. It was in that role where I became quite familiar and understanding of the role of the division relative to the overall association organization. It was during my membership on the executive committee that Russ McGregor was an employee of the association as the agricultural legislative representative. So it was easy for me to relate to the employees of the association, and it also helped to fill my needs in representing the division. What I set out to do was not to be obnoxious in representing agriculture to the presidents, to create an atmosphere of friendliness and respect, so that when I brought something forward, it wasn't laughed off the agenda. Lage: Had that been the attitude before? Kendrick: Yes, because the budget requests were obnoxious. Lage: So it was what was being brought to them that created the disrespect? 378 Kendrick: Yes. That was the major cause of the disrespect. The budgets had been just wish lists. They were not practical. They represented an arrogance, in my judgment, that was totally unjustified, because they failed to observe any constraints in their total requests. Lage: So you had to work with those undercurrents. Kendrick: There was a prejudice about agriculture that I figured I had to overcome in order to convince the members of the executive committee that the budgets we were going to bring forward were really needed budgets, carefully conceived and justified. We got the executive committee to designate a president to sit on the division's budget development committee, so they had a hand in seeing it from the start. And it finally worked out as we had planned. The budget requests were programmatically based, they were much more realistic and the presidents felt that they had had a hand in their development. They began sailing through the executive committee with very little comment. If Well, by the time I finished my three-year term — that was in the middle seventies, '76 or thereabouts — I think we'd gotten the executive committee to have a pretty positive relationship with the Division of Agriculture. I really enjoyed my association with the presidents and other members of the executive committee. A number of the presidents had been agricultural administrators anyway and had gone on to become leaders of their institutions. So I felt reasonably good about being able to contribute to the evolution of a more responsible division organization, as it works with the association in its broader mission. And during this period, we were able to bring into the association's office some ongoing staffing assistance. There seems to be an enormous amount of federal involvements in agriculture that need almost constant attention. So it required daily involvement by a staff member of the association, the first one of whom was Russ McGregor, my former assistant. A couple of years after my official term I was asked to fill an unexpired term as the division's representative on the association's executive committee which I did with pleasure. Lage: Was this in the eighties, then? Kendrick: It was approaching the eighties. I'd been off the committee for two years, and had been succeeded by Keith Kennedy who was at that time the dean of agriculture at Cornell. He was asked to move into the provost position at Cornell, so he lost his 379 Kendrick: agricultural responsibilities and was an inappropriate representative of the division. So they asked if I would fill out the last year of his term. I was willing and pleased to fill out his term because I was re— installed with acquaintances whom I'd been working with earlier. I really enjoyed my executive committee colleagues and the work with the national association. A change was made in the leadership of the association during the interim period of my service on the executive committee. The previous executive officer was Ralph Huett. and he was succeeded by Bob Clodius. Bob Clodius is a nephew of Harry Wellman. He had been at Wisconsin at one time. Dan Aldrich has been president of the association; so has Mike Heyman; and so has Chuck Young. So the University of California has had some significant involvement in the association. Lage : So at this level in the national association, the University is represented by the chancellors as well as the President. Kendrick: Yes. Foreign Agricultural Programs Kendrick: Lage: Kendrick; There was a good deal of involvement in the division with foreign agricultural programs. Some institutions had strong identifiable commitments to foreign agricultural programs, much more so than the University of California had. But it was through the processes of many meetings with governmental officials and the institutional foreign agricultural administrators under the umbrella of the Division of Agriculture that resulted in augmenting some of the foreign agricultural commitments through Congress and ultimately into adminstration through AID [Agency for International Development]. Is that an area you ever tried to develop at the University? No, I felt that the University's promotion policies, as far as its faculty was concerned, did not permit us to engage in foreign agricultural programs as highly organized as a lot of other institutions did. We are so committed to faculty peer evaluation of professional creative work that you don't get much credit — or any credit, unless it's an augmentation of your professional activities in the first place — for the kind of service commitment that foreign agricultural programs require. 380 Kendrick: Institutions with active foreign agricultural programs would get contracts from AID to staff and provide faculty for developing institutions in South America, or the Philippines, or in India, or in Africa, or wherever, and that would require a faculty commitment for several years at a time. There is no way we can really commit our faculty, particularly at the assistant or associate professor level, to go off to Pakistan or India for five years. When they come back, they would find themselves bypassed in their merit advancements. The way that was handled in some institutions was to hire people specifically to go on overseas assignments. They would have a university affiliation, but they wouldn't be members of the regular faculty. When those kinds of commitments became institutionalized, you had a phantom faculty in a sense, who were really not regular faculty, but were outreach people. It was a special staff to do a special job. But there's no room in the University of California's organization for that kind of arrangement, so I didn't feel justified in spending a lot of time in developing these kinds of programs. We participated a lot in foreign programs, but it's mostly on an individual basis. There are a few formal commitments in which we have signed some contractual agreements to manage a program, and I think they haven't all been that successful. We had one with Egypt on the Davis campus that a lot of people worked on, and made a lot of trips, but in my judgment, it didn't make much of an impact. That's a prejudicial judgment, since I have not been to Egypt to view what was done. I think some of the participants would suggest that, yes, they were successful in changing some of the practices. The thing you're dealing with, when you're working in foreign agricultural areas, is that the country and the institutions are organized very differently than our own, and we don't often recognize how differently they are organized. If they don't have a supporting kind of infrastructure that in the U.S. is standard and expected, then when you go home, everything falls apart. Most foreign countries don't have an extension program like ours in the United States, with resident experts. Most foreign agricultural assistance programs are conducted by the countries' ministries of agriculture, which are really regulatory agencies. They are not primarily educational organizations. It is a subject that has received a lot of attention, but I think one that won't change very soon, if ever. It's very difficult to sustain the kind of information and practices that you think you've started without resident specialists with longterm commitments to changing native habits and practices. 381 Lage: I think we've pretty well covered these areas that we set out to cover. I'm sure there are going to be more things that come up, but shall we — ? Kendrick: My national association activities was the principal thing I wanted to cover. The other kinds of ad hoc activities I was involved with were not necessarily programs, they just came in the normal course of operating as the University's chief administrator for its agricultural programs. The few chances I have had to travel around the world and to visit foreign countries to observe things have served to increase my understanding and knowledge of how other people do things — a part of the process of broadening my education to supplement my own judgment in making decisions on my own institutional programs. if 382 XIX SUMMING UP* Retirement Events The end of my career with the University of California was marked by three very special events. In June of 1986 a day-long convocation was held on the Davis Campus at which a number of speakers covered subjects in agriculture and agricultural research which were of special interest to me. I certainly appreciated the planning and work of all who participated in that event made to make it a memorable occasion. I also felt honored to have Chancellors Hullar and Meyer, Vice Chancellor Park, and President Gardner take part in the program. The convocation was followed by a delightful reception held at the Davis Faculty Club, which was attended by many of my friends and acquaintances. Evelyn and I were joined at this event by my mother, my sister, Liz, and her husband, Don Gale, my brother, Ed, and Evelyn's sister, Lura Alleyne. The surprise of the reception was an unexpected invitation to me to join Dan Aldrich and George Zentmyer in singing a couple of our old quartet songs. It had been nearly twenty years since we last sang together, but the big surprise was that we sounded like we had been rehearsing regularly. Most of the people attending the reception had no idea that I had ever been involved in quartet singing. This event was followed shortly by another reception held on the Riverside Campus in the University Club (formerly called the Faculty (Hub) and hosted by Dean Irwin Sherman of the College of Natural and Agricultural Sciences. Evelyn and I enjoyed this reception particularly because quite a number of our town friends as well as our current and early campus friends and colleagues came to greet us and wish us well in the future. It was an afternoon filled with reminiscences. * Chapter XIX is a written epilogue, added by Mr. Kendrick after he completed his review of the transcript. 383 The final event held in late September of 1986 in our honor was a marvelous reception hosted by President Gardner at the Blake Estate in Kensington, the President's official residence. It was planned by a committee composed of people from my office and from several offices within the President's Office. The only thing they didn't plan for was an unexpected rain which forced us out of the beautiful gardens into the Blake House itself. That cramped the space for the attendees but it certainly did not cramp the spirit of the occasion. This was an especially heartwarming afternoon because many of my Berkeley friends and current and former colleagues came by to extend their greetings and best wishes. I felt particularly favored by these three events because each was unique and each gave me an opportunity to reflect on my work and associations with the three campuses with which I had the most contacts during my lifetime, and with the University- wide administration where I spent nearly half of my active career. Outlook for the Future Finally in closing, although this is a document of history, I would like to be permitted to comment on what I believe is needed in future research in order to keep California's agriculture strong and economically viable. The agenda would consist of four major categories under which nearly all of the many existing individual research endeavors would fit. The main requirement would be for the researchers and the managers to define the programs and projects in such a way that they would be steps toward fulfilling one of the major goals. These categories or goals are: 1) Reduce agriculture's chemical dependency. Modern-day agriculture has become almost totally dependent on chemicals for fertilizers, weed and pest control, and growth regulators. Although California has one of the tightest sets of regulations governing the use of pesticides, there is still the suspicion by consumers that farmers and ranchers care little about the safety of the products they produce as far as these introduced chemicals are concerned. One way to restore that confidence and also reduce the cost of production is to reduce the need for these chemical additives. There are a whole host of things that might be researched in order to achieve this goal, including bioengineering, exploitation of the integrated pest management systems, alteration of cultural practices, and education of the consumer that cosmetic appearances of fruit and 384 vegetables rarely have any relationship to the quality of the product itself. A by-product of this chemical dependency is the necessity to deal with contamination of some soil and water sites caused by the disposal of hazardous chemicals or the transport of them through soil and water systems. There are probably many other research programs which could also contribute to the achievement of this goal. 2) Reduce agriculture's farm labor dependency. This is a boldly stated goal in view of all the trouble the University has had with the farm mechanization issue. Nevertheless, I believe it is necessary for the future well-being of California's agriculture. There will be many social scientists who will strongly disagree with this goal, but they are more concerned with rural employment than they are with a viable agricultural industry. I am encouraged by the advocacy of this goal by a few social scientists who are experts in the subject of farm labor and the use of foreign workers who are both legal and illegal emigrants as farm laborers. This will require a renewed emphasis on developing mechanical aids in the cultural and harvesting operations of farming as well as the development of new varieties and crops which can be handled by mechanical devices. New concepts of the way crop-plants are grown will undoubtedly be required. 3) Improve agriculture's water-use efficiency. With the exception of rangeland agriculture, nearly all the remaining agriculture in California is dependent on our stored and transported water supply. There are increasing demands on this water supply by the expanding urban developments in southern and central California and by the rising concerns of environmental groups who want to be assured that we are not destroying the integrity of our wildland habitants in order to satisfy these agricultural, urban, and industrial needs. Since agriculture is the single largest user of the water supply, utilizing about 85 percent of the supply, it is essential that it demonstrate to the public that its use is not wasteful and is fully justified. It probably should be prepared to reduce its demand on the total supply somewhat. The implications of this goal are broad, including the development of sophisticated irrigation systems for a wide variety of crop-plants under widely varying environmental and soil types, changing cropping patterns, and the development of drought- tolerant varieties of crop-plants. 4) Enhance market opportunities for California's agriculture. California's agriculture regularly produces from 25 to 30 percent more than the domestic market demands. This means that more than a quarter of the commodities produced each year must 385 find a market overseas in order to maintain a healthy balance between supply and demand. While much of this goal is the responsibility of the industry itself, there are things that our specialists in the University can do to aid the industry in achieving this goal. Aside from the educational endeavors to assist those who wish to be involved in foreign marketing, we have the capacity to survey and analyze world-wide agricultural marketing opportunities and bring this information to the attention of our farmers and ranchers. We could also help improve our domestic market demand by assisting many small- and medium-sized growers meet the growing desire by consumers for exotic fruits and vegetables and meat free from additive chemicals. The increasing diversity of the ethnic mix of California's population also suggests a change in the domestic market demand by these groups for food with which they are accustomed. This could present a challenge not only to the producers of these new crops but also to the University's genetic engineers and plant breeders. Well, this is my agenda for California's agriculture for the next several decades. It is an agenda that would not be easily fulfilled, but it is one that would be immensely satisfying to promote. I do not want these remarks misunderstood. They are not meant to tell my successor what he ought to seek as his goals for the future. These are my own thoughts based on my own observations and experiences. My successor will have to develop his own agenda for the future, and furthermore, he will have the' responsibility to implement programs to achieve them. I have the privilege of being an observer and occasional commentator. I have had a most satisfying career and I'm grateful to Ann Lage and the Regional Oral History Office of Berkeley for stimulating me to record it for those who might be interested in reviewing it. I take full responsibility for its content. I hope the listeners to the tapes and readers of the text will gain a sense of the excitement which characterized my life and will also gain an understanding of what motivated Jim Kendrick, I hope it also records accurately nearly two decades of agricultural activities in the University of California, a period characterized generally by turmoil, no-growth budgets, and rising criticism of agriculture in general and some of the University's program in particular. Transcribed and Final Typed by Shannon Page 386 TAPE GUIDE — James B. Kendrick. Jr. Interview 1: September 2. 1987 tape 1. side A tape 1. side B tape 2. side A tape 2, side B Interview 2i tape 3, September 9, 1987 side A tape 3, side B tape 4, side A tape 4, side B Interview 3: September 15. 1987 tape 5, side A tape 5. side B tape 6, side A tape 6. side B not recorded tape 7. side A tape 7, side B not recorded Interview 4: September 17. 1987 tape 8. side A tape 8. side B tape 9, side A tape 9. side B Interview 5: September 28. 1987 tape 10, side A tape 10. side B tape 11. side A tape 11. side B tape 12. side A tape 12. side B not recorded Interview 6: October 6. 1987 tape 13. side A tape 13. side B not recorded tape 14. side A tape 14, side B Interview 7: October 13. 1987 tape 15. side A tape 15. side B tape 16. side A tape 16. side B tape 17. side A tap? 17. side B not recorded 1 1 9 16 24 28 28 34 41 48 53 53 60 67 73 79 79 85 92 100 106 106 112 119 126 133 135 135 136 143 147 147 153 161 169 176 387 Interview 8: October 16, 1987 tape 18, side A tape 18, side B tape 19, side A tape 19, side B tape 20, side A tape 20, side B Interview 9: October 22, 1987 tape 21, side A tape 21, side B tape 22, side A tape 22, side B tape 23, side A tape 23, side B tape 24, side A tape 24, side B not recorded Interview 10: October 29, 1987 tape 25, side A tape 25, side B tape 26, side A tape 26, side B tape 27, side A tape 27. side B Interview 11: November 5, 1987 tape 28. side A tape 28, side B tape 29, side A tape 29, side B insert from tape 31, side A tape 31, side B Interview 12: November 13, 1987 tape 30, side A tape 30. side B tape 31, side A tape 31, side B tape 32, side A tape 32, side B 184 184 190 198 205 213 220 226 226 233 241 249 255 262 270 275 275 282 289 296 304 311 313 313 320 328 336 343 344 350 350 357 364 368 371 378 INDEX — James B. Kendrick. Jr. 388 advisory boards. 150-152. 157-158. 239-243. 337-339 affirmative action in employment, 303. 315-316. 320-324 Agrarian Reform group, 174-176 agribusiness, 155, 169 agricultural interest groups, California. 56-60. 151-152. 157. 186-189. 212-214. 219-220, 227- 229, 232-233, 236-238, 244. 270- 274, 288. 291-292. 294-295, 299- 300. 304-305 Agricultural Experiment Station. administrative structure, 144- 149. 287-290 budget. 184-196. 212-214. 282- 285 field stations. 189-193 personnel. 200-203. 255-256 relationship with USDA. 278-280 special research programs, 226- 274, 310-312. see also under name of research unit see also University of California, Riverside, Citrus Experiment Station Agricultural Extension Service. See Cooperative Extension Service Agricultural Issues Center, 233-246 agricultural labor, 153, 156-162, 166-174. 217-218, 294. 384 Agricultural Labor Relations Act, 217-218 agricultural mechanization, 159- 162, 166-174 agricultural research, 142-143, 146. 152. 169-170. 226-274. 372- 373. 383-385 see also plant pathology, research Agriculture, Department of. See United States Department of Agriculture; California, Department of Agriculture air pollution, 62-66 Alcorn, George. 287, 290 Aldrich, Daniel, 72-78, 103-104, 332 Allewelt, William, 240 Backus, Myron, 38 Bartnicki-Garcia. 108-109 Batchelor, Leon. 55 Bergland, Robert, 177 Berryhill, Clare, 224 biological control of insects, 200- 201. 264-265 Bird, Rose, 216-219 Boyce, Al. 107. 129, 132 Boyd. Philip L. , 79-80 Bradfield, Robert. 303. 305 Brady. Ronald, 347-349 Brown, Edmund G. , Jr. , as governor, 207-212, 216, 221, 265-266 Butz, Earl. 177-178 California, State of Agriculture and Services Agency, 216-220 Agricultural Labor Relations Beard, 218. 240 Board of Food and Agriculture, 198. 206. 224 Department of Finance. 196-197, 204. 210. 269-270 Department of Food and Agriculture, 216-217, 219-220, 224-225 Department of Health Services, 253-254 Legislature. 154-156. 160-162. 186-187. 196-197 California Farm Bureau. 291-292 California Rural Legal Assistance (CRLA). 174-182 389 Calvary Presbyterian Church, Riverside, 118-120 Cambridge University, 66, 67-69 Carson, Rachel, 153, 170 Chapman, Homer, 78-79 Chavez, Cesar, 153, 171, 173, 218 Coke, Earl. 198, 203, 277-278 Cooperative Extension Service, 57 administrative structure, 149, 287-288, 290-291, 296-302 budget. 188, 280-282. 285-286 clientele groups, 291-292, 313- 315 coordination with Experiment Station. 252. 254-255. 257- 262. 276-278 nutrition education program, 162-166 personnel management, 162-165, 199-200, 223, 293-309, 314- 316. 320-324, 329-331 research in, 230, 307-308 and USDA, 278-280 Davis, California, 5-7 schooling in, 8-9, 11-16 see also University of California, Davis Day, Boysie. 145, 282, 287-289 Deal, Andy, 260 Deukmej ian, George, as governor, 220-225. 268 Dugger, Benjamin M. . 33, 37-38 Bugger. Willie Mack. 143, 145-146 Dutton, Frederick, 154 Dymally, Mervin, 171 Eberhardt, Robert, 240 Executive Bulls, 233-234 Farrell, Kenneth. 230, 235, 244, 307. 309, 310 Feller, David, 344, 349 Furtado, Loren, 195 Furth, Gordon, 8-9. 15, 16 Gardner, B. Delworth, 231 Gardner, David P.. 182, 215. 220- 223, 235. 244-245. 347-349. 367. 369-371 Gardner, Max W. . 4, 25. 116 Giannini Foundation. 226-233 Gilliam. Harold. 157 Grant. Allan, 198-199, 203, 206 growers associations, 56-57, 157 see also agricultural constituency, California Gutierrez. Andy, 264-265 Haagen-Smit, A. J. , 64 Halden, Dewey, 12-14 Hall. Prentice. 327-328 Hanna, Jack, 166-167 Hard Tomatoes. Hard Times. 168-170 Hart, James D. , 17 Hatch Act, 174-175, 177, 179-180, 194. 279 Heady, Harold. 290, 300 Henle, Evelyn. See Kendrick, Evelyn Henle Henning, John, 317. 319-320 Hewitt, William B., 259-261 Heyns, Roger, 205, 206 Hightower, James. 168-169 Hinderaker. Ivan, 137, 139 Hitch, Charles, 129-131, 136-137, 147, 207. 351 Hutchison, Claude, 133, 284 Integrated Pest Management program, 215, 263-268 international agricultural programs, 379-381 James-Massengale, Jyrl, 240, 242 Juvenal, Andy, 157 Kearney Agricultural Center. See San Joaquin Valley Agricultural Research and Extension Center 390 Kearney Foundation for Soil Science, 246-251 Keitt. George. 39-40 Kelly. Clarence. 104. 145. 282. 287 Kendrick. Edgar (brother), 4. 28-30 Kendrick, Elizabeth (sister, Mrs. Donald Gale), 4. 28 Kendrick, Evelyn Henle, 15-16. 18. 26. 32. 49. 118-121. 125. 127-129. 147 Kendrick, James B., Sr. (father), 1-7, 9-11. 13-14. 20. 21-22, 25- 26. 29, 92-93, 116 Kendrick, Violet (mother), 3, 6, 9- 11. 14 Kleingartner, Archie, 296, 298-299, 316-317, 330. 348 Klotz. L. J. . 50. 54, 55. 72 Lewis. Lowell, 224. 231-232. 270. 301. 324-325 Linsley, E. Gorton, 356 Littleworth, Arthur, 239-240 Lorenzen, Goby, 166-167 Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, agricultural committee, 58-60 Lyng, Richard, 178. 198. 237-238 McCorkle. Chester. 208-209 McGregor, Russell, 280-282, 298, 377 McLaughlin, Nancy, 306 MacLeod, Guy, 155 marketing order boards, 216-217 Martinez, Vilma. 182, 299, 317, 319-320 Maslach, George, 336 Mathias. Mildred. 360-363 Meyer, James, 132-133, 145, 306 Middleton, John. 50. 52. 54, 55. 62-64. 93. 110, 116 minorities in agriculture, 324-328 Moje, William, 109 Mosquito Research Program, 252-255 National Association of State Universities and Land Grant Colleges, 289. 332, 374-375 Council of Administrative Heads of Agriculture [CAHA] . 375-379 Natural Reserve System, 360-368 Norris, Kenneth, 360-363, 366 nutrition education, 162-166 Oliver, Sally, 161 Oswald, John W. (Jack), 21-23, 131, 137, 195 pesticides, 153-154 Peterson, Maurice, 104 Petris. Nicholas, 272-273 plant pathology, 24 biological vs. fungicidal control, 38-40 patriarchs of, 26, 32-40 research, 47-49. 56-58. 60-67, 71 specialties in, 106-113 trend toward basic research, 110 see also University of California, Davis and Berkeley; University of Wisconsin Pound, Glenn, 30-32 Reagan, Ronald, as governor, 187, 198. 203-206 Riverside, California community organizations, 77, 118- 121, 125-127 living conditions, 53-54 school board, 127-129 tensions with University, 82-84, 121-125 see also University of California, Riverside Rominger, Richard, 215, 219-220. 266 Rothamsted Agricultural Experiment Station. Harpenden, England, 66- 70, 92 391 Salisbury. Lois, 240-241 Sammet, Loy, 289-290. 301. 310, 312. 356 Samuelsen, Roger, 360-368 San Joaquin Valley Agricultural Research and Extension Center, 256-261 Saxon, David, 188. 208, 211-215, 221. 223, 296, 351-352 Scheinbaum. Stanley, 319-320 Siebert, Jerome, 271, 291, 293, 298-302, 319. 323, 329-330 Slosson, Elvenia J. , 251 Slosson Fund for Ornamental Horticulture, 251-252 Smith, Ralph E. , 5, 59-60 Smith-Lever Act, 174, 176, 279 Southern University (Louisiana), 324-328 Spieth, Herman, 81, 90 Statewide Critical Applied Research Fund [SCAR], 193-195 Stebbins. G. Ledyard, 20, 365-366 Stevenson, Eugene, 321-323 Strong, Walter (Strong Committee), 296, 298. 316-317. 320 Sustainable Agriculture Program, 270-274. 311-312 tomato harvester, 166-170 United Farmworkers Union, 153, 171. 173. 218 United States Armed Services, 40-46 United States Department of Agriculture. 176-178, 194-195, 278-280, 304, 306-307 Agricultural Research Policy Advisory Committee, 372-373 Agriculture Research Service, 31 University of California (statewide) Academic Council, 100-103. 135- 136 Academic Senate. 94, 99-100 University of California (statewide) (cont. ) agricultural division administrative structure, 103- 105, 148, 275-291, 299-302, 305-310, 329-331, 350-353 advisory council, 150-152, 157- 158 legal action against. 174-182 purposes, 147, 149-153 relations with campuses, 185, 283-285 relations with governors, 198- 225. 265-267 relations with state legislature, 150, 154-156, 159-162, 163, 183, 186-187, 207, 216, 266-267, 272-273 selection of vice president, 129-133 and USDA, 178-180, 288 see also Agricultural Experiment Station, agricultural interest groups, Natural Reserve System, Water Resources Center, Cooperative Extension Service Board of Regents, 136, 154, 156, 170-174, 182-183, 204-206, 208- 210. 299. 317. 319-320. 342-343, 345-347 budget process, 135. 198-225, 236-239. 265-267, 273, 369-371 expansion, 79-82 intercampus relations, 6-7, 22, 116-117, 132-134, 354-356 Retirement System Board [UCRS] , 343-349 University Relations Office, 240- 341 University of California, Berkeley Biological Control Division, 200- 201 Bowles Hall, 17-19. 27 College of Agriculture, 4 College of Natural Resources, 353-359 Department (School) of Forestry, 353, 355-356 392 University of California, Berkeley (cont. ) Department of Plant Pathology, 4- 5, 25, 116 student experience, 1938-1942. 16-24 undergraduate education, 19-24 see also Giannini Foundation University of California, Davis, 354-355 Department of Plant Pathology, 4- 5, 22. 116 faculty lifestyle, 6-10 relationship with Berkeley, 6-7, 22, 229 see also Davis, California University of California, Los Angeles, 191-192 University of California, Riverside, 354 Academic Senate, 84-86, 94-100 Budget Committee, 95-99 Citrus Experiment Station, 50-66, 72. 85-87, 141-146 Air Pollution Research Laboratory, 62-66 College of Letters and Science, 79-86, 139 College of Natural and Agricul tural Sciences, 140-146 Department of Plant Pathology, 72-73, 92-93, 106-117 faculty camaraderie, 72-73, 115- 116 faculty club, 74-78 faculty governance, 137-140 free speech, 124-125 Graduate Division, 87-90 see also Riverside, California University of Wisconsin, graduate education in plant pathology, 24- 26, 32-40. 47-51 Wada. Yori, 317, 319-320 Walker. J. C. . 26, 32-40, 47, 49-51 Wallace, Merrill, 76-77 Wallace, Tim, 216-217 Walt, Harold. 268-270, 369-371 Water Resources Center, 332-339 Watkins, Gordon, 80-82 Wedding, Randy, 94, 100 Weinberger, Caspar, 204 Wellman, Harry, 103, 129-133, 135- 136, 231, 350-351 Western Growers Association, 56-57 Wildland Resources Center, 268-270 Williams. Robley, 135 Wine Institute, 217 World War II service, 42-46 Zentmyer, George, 54, 76-77, 110 Van den Bosch, Robert, 200 Vasconcellos, John, 154-155, 160, 163. 207 Vaux. Henry, Sr. , 268-269 393 UNIVERSITY HISTORY SERIES Documenting the history of the University of California has been a responsibility of the Regional Oral History Office since the Office was established in 195A. Oral history memoirs with University-related persons are listed below. They have been underwritten by the U.C. Berkeley Foundation, the Chancellor's Office. University departments, or by extramural funding for special projects. The oral histories, tapes and transcripts, are open to scholarly use in The Bancroft Library. Bound, indexed copies of the transcripts are available at cost to manuscript libraries. Adams, Frank, "Irrigation, Reclamation, and Water Administration," 1956, 491 p. Amerine, Maynard A., "The University of California and the State's Wine Industry." 1971. 142 p. Bierman, Jessie, "Maternal and Child Health in Montana. California, the U.S. Children's Bureau, and WHO, 1926-1967," 1987, 246 p. Bird, Grace, "Leader in Junior College Education at Bakersfield and the University of California," Two volumes, 1978. 342 p. Birge, Raymond Thayer, "Raymond Thayer Birge, Physicist," 1960, 395 p. Blaisdell, Allen C., "Foreign Students and the Berkeley International House, 1928-1961." 1968. 419 p. Blaisdell, Thomas C. Jr. (in process). Professor Emeritus of Political Science. Chaney, Ralph Works, "Paleobotanist, Conservationist," 1950, 277 p. Chao, Yuen Ren, "Chinese Linguist, Phonologist, Composer, and Author." 1977. 242 p. Constance, Lincoln, 'Versatile Berkeley Botanist: Plant Taxonomy and University Governance," 1987, 358 p. (est.) Corley, James V., "Serving the University in Sacramento," 1969, 143 p. Cross, Ira Brown, "Portrait of an Economics Professor," 1967, 128 p. Cruess, William V., "A Half Century in Food and Wine Technology," 1967, 122 p. 394 Davidson. Mary Blossom. 'The Dean of Women and the Importance of Students." 1967. 79 p. Dennes. William R.. "Philosophy and the University Since 1915." 1970. 162 p. Donnelly. Ruth. "The University's Role in Housing Services." 1970, 129 p. Dornin. May (in process). University Archivist. Elberg. Sanford S. (in process), Dean of Graduate Division, 1961-1978. Ebright. Carroll "Ky". "California Varsity and Olympics Crew Coach." 1968. 74 p. Erdman, Henry E., "Agricultural Economics: Teaching. Research, and Writing: University of California. Berkeley. 1922-1969." 1971, 252 p. Evans, Clinton W.. "California Athlete. Coach. Administrator, Ambassador," 1968. 106 p. Foster. Herbert B.. "The Role of the Engineer's Office in the Development of the University of California Campuses." 1960, 134 p. Gordon. Walter A., "Athlete. Officer in Law Enforcement and Administration. Governor of the Virgin Islands," Two volumes. 1980. 621 p. Grether. Ewald T. (in process), Dean Emeritus, School of Business Administration. Griffiths, Farnham P., "The University of California and the California Bar," 1954. 46 p. Hagar, Ella Barrows, "Continuing Memoirs: Family, Community, University," 1974. 272 p. Hamilton. Brutus. "Student Athletics and the Voluntary Discipline." 1967. 50 p. Harding. Sidney T. . "A Life in Western Water Development." 1967. 524 p. Harris. Joseph P., "Professor and Practitioner: Government. Election Reform, and the Votomatic," 1983, 155 p. Hart, James D. . "Fine Printers in the San Francisco Bay Area," 1969, 86 p. Hays, William Charles, "Order, Taste, and Grace in Architecture," 1968, 241 p. Heller, Elinor Raas, "A Volviteer in Politics, in Higher Education, and on Governing Boards, " 1984, 851 p. 395 Heyns. Roger W.. "Berkeley Chancellor. 1965-1971; The University in a Turbulent Society." 1987. 180 p. Hildebrand, Joel H., "Chemistry. Education, and the University of California." 1962, 196 p. Hotchkis. Preston, Sr. , "One Man's Dynamic Role in California Politics and Water Development, and World Affairs." 1980. 121 p. Huff, Elizabeth, "Teacher and Founding Curator of the East Asiatic Library: from Urbana to Berkeley by Way of Peking," 1977, 278 p. Huntington. Emily. "A Career in Consumer Economics and Social Insurance." 1971, 111 p. Hutchison, Claude B., "The College of Agriculture, University of California. 1922-1952." 1962. 524 p. Jenny. Hans (in process). Professor of Plant and Soil Biology. Johnston. Marguerite Kulp. and Mixer, Joseph R., "Student Housing. Welfare. and the ASUC," 1970. 157 p. Jones, Mary C., "Harold S. Jones and Mary C. Jones, Partners in Longitudinal Studies." 1983. 154 p. Joslyn, Maynard A. "A Technologist Views the California Wine Industry," 1974. 151 p. Kendrick, James B. Jr. "From Plant Pathologist to Vice President for Agricultural and Natural Resources. University of California. 1947-1986." 1989. 392 p. Kingman, Harry L. . "Citizenship in a Democracy," 1973, 292 p. Kroeber-Quinn. Theodora, "Timeless Woman, Writer and Interpreter of the California Indian World." 1982, 453 p. Landreth. Catherine, "The Nursery School of the Institute of Child Welfare of the University of California, Berkeley," 1983, 51 p. Langelier, Wilfred F.. "Teaching. Research, and Consultation in Water Purification and Sewage Treatment, University of California at Berkeley, 1916-1955," 1982. 81 p. Lehman. Benjamin H.. "Recollections and Reminiscences of Life in the Bay Area from 1920 Onward." 1969. 367 p. Lenzen, Victor F. . "Physics and Philosophy." 1965. 206 p. Lessing. Ferdinand D. . "Early Years." 1963. 70 p. 396 McGauhey, Percy H., "The Sanitary Engineering Research Laboratory: Administration, Research, and Consultation. 1950-1972." 1974. 259 p. Mclaughlin. Donald, "Careers in Mining Geology and Management, University Governance and Teaching," 1975, 318 p. Merritt, Ralph P., "After Me Cometh a Builder, the Recollections of Ralph Palmer Merritt, " 1962. 137 p. Metcalf, Woodbridge. "Extension Forester, 1926-1956," 1969, 138 p. Meyer, Karl F. , "Medical Research and Public Health," 1976, 439 p. Miles. Josephine, "Poetry, Teaching, and Scholarship," 1980, 344 p. Mitchell, Lucy Sprague. "Pioneering in Education," 1962, 174 p. Neuhaus, Eugen, "Reminiscences: Bay Area Art and the University of California Art Department." 1961. 48 p. Neylan, John Francis, "Politics, Law. and the University of California," 1962. 319 p. O'Brien. Morrough P. (in process), Dean Emeritus, College of Engineering. Olmo. Harold P., "Plant Genetics and New Grape Varieties," 1976, 183 p. Olney, Mary McLean, ''Oakland, Berkeley, and the University of California, 1880-1895," 1963. 173 p. Pepper, Stephen C., "Art and Philosophy at the University of California, 1919-1962." 1963. 471 p. Porter. Robert Langley, " Physician, Teacher, and Guardian of the Public Health." 1960. 102 p. Richardson, Leon J.. "Berkeley Culture, University of California Highlights, and University Extension, 1892-1960," 1962. 248 p. Robb. Agnes Roddy. "Robert Gordon Sproul and the University of California," 1976, 134 p. Selvin, Herman F., "The University of California and California Law and Lawyers. 1920-1978." 1979. 217 p. Shields. Peter J.. "Reminiscences." 1954, 107 p. Shurtleff, Roy L.. "The University's Class of 1912. Investment Banking, and the Shurtleff Family History." 1982, 69 p. Sproul, Ida Wittschen, "The President's Wife," 1981, 347 p. 397 Stevens, Frank C., "Forty Years in the Office of the President. University of California. 1905-1945." 1959. 175 p. Stewart. George R. . "A Little of Myself." 1972, 319 p. Stewart, Jessie Harris, "Memories of Girlhood and the University," 1978, 70 p. Strong, Edward W. (in process), former Chancellor and Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, Berkeley campus. Struve, Gleb (in process). Professor of Slavic Language and Literature. Taylor, Paul Schuster Volume I: "Education, Field Research, and Family," 1973, 342 p. Volume II and Volume III: "California Water and Agricultural Labor," 1975, 519 p. Towle. Katherine A., "Administration and Leadership," 1970, 369 p. Underbill, Robert M., "University of California: Lands, Finances, and Investments," 1968, 446 p. Vaux. Henry J. , "Forestry in the Public Interest: Education, Economics, State Policy, 1933-1983." 1987, 337+ p. Waring, Henry C. , "Henry C. Waring on University Extension." 1960, 130 p. Wellman, Harry, "Teaching, Research, and Administration, University of California. 1925-1968." 1976. 259 p. Wessels. Glenn A., "Education of an Artist," 1967, 326 p. Wilson, Garff B., "The Invisible Man, or, Public Ceremonies Chairman at Berkeley for Thirty-Five Years," 1981, 442 p. Winkler. Albert J.. "Viti cultural Research at UC Davis, 1921-1971." 1973, 144 p. Witter, Jean C., "The University, the Community, and the Lifeblood of Business." 1968, 109 p. Woods. Baldwin M. . "University of California Extension," 1957, 102 p. Woolman, Marjorie J. (in process), Secretary Emeritus of the Regents, University of California. Wurster, William Wilson, "College of Environmental Design, University of California. Campus Planning, and Architectural Practice," 1964, 339 p. 398 Multi- Interviewee Series Blake House Project (in process) Includes interviews with Mai Arbegast. Igor Blake. Ron and Myra Brocchini. Toichi Domoto, Eliot Evans, Tony Hail. Linda Haymaker, Charles Hitch, Flo Holmes, CLark and Kay Kerr, Gerry Scott, George and Helena Thacher, Walter Vodden. and Norma Wilier. "Centennial History Project, 1954-1960," 329 p. Includes interviews with George P. Adams. Anson Stiles Blake, Walter C. Blasdale. Joel H. Hildebrand, Samuel J. Holmes. Alfred L. Kroeber, Ivan M. Linforth, George D. Louderback, Agnes Fay Morgan, and William Popper. "Thomas D. Church. Landscape Architect," Two volumes, 1978, 803 p. Volume I: Includes interviews with Theodore Bernardi, Lucy Butler, June Meehan Campbell, Louis De Monte, Walter Doty, Donn Emmons, Floyd Gerow, Harriet Henderson, Joseph Howland, Ruth Jaffe, Burton Litton, Germane Milano, Miriam Pierce, George Rockrise, Robert Royston, Geraldine Knight Scott, Roger Sturtevant, Francis Violich, and Harold Watkin. Volume II: Includes interviews with Maggie Baylis. Elizabeth Roberts Church, Robert Glasner, Grace Hall. Lawrence Halprin. Proctor Mellquist, Everitt Miller, Harry Sanders, Lou Schenone, Jack Stafford, Goodwin Steinberg. and Jack Wagstaff. "Dental History Project, University of California, San Francisco," 1969, 1114 p. Includes interviews with Dickson Bell, Reuben L. Blake. Willard C. Fleming. George A, Hughes. Leland D. Jones, George F. McGee, C.E. Rutledge, William B. Ryder. Jr., Herbert J. Samuels, Joseph Sciutto. William S. Smith, Harvey Stallard, George E. Steninger. and Abraham W. Ward. Disabled Students Project (in process) "Julia Morgan Architectural History Project," Two volumes. 1976. 621 p. Volume I: **rhe Work of Walter Steilberg and Julia Morgan, and the Department of Architecture, UCB, 1904-1954" Includes interviews with Walter T. Steilberg, Robert Ratcliff, Evelyn Paine Ratcliff. Norman L. Jensen, John E. Wagstaff, George C. Hodges, Edward B. Hussey, and Warren Charles Perry. Volume II: "Julia Morgan, Her Office, and a House" Includes interviews with Mary Grace Barren, Kirk 0. Rowlands, Norma Wilier. Quintilla Williams. Catherine Freeman Nimitz. Polly Lawrence McNaught, Hettie Belle Marcus. Bjarne Dahl. Bjarne Dahl. Jr.. Morgan North, Dorothy Wormser Coblentz, and Flora d'llle North. 399 "The Prytaneans: An Oral History of the Prytanean Society and its Members," Volume I: "1901-1920." 1970. 307 p. Volume II: "1921-1930," 1977. 313 p. "Robert Gordon Sproul Oral History Project," Two volumes, 1986, 904 p. Includes interviews with Horace Albright, Stuart LeRoy Anderson, Katherine Bradley, Dyke Brown, Natalie Cohen, Paul A. Dodd, May Dornin, Richard E. Erickson, Walter S. Frederick, David P. Gardner, Vernon Goodin, Marion Sproul Goodin, Louis Heilbron, Clark Kerr, Adrian Kragen, Robert S. Johnson, Mary Blumer Lawrence, Donald McLaughlin, Dean McHenry, Stanley E. McCaffrey, Kendric and Marion Morrish, William Penn Mott, Jr., Herman Phleger, John B. deC. M. Saunders, Carl Sharsmith. John Sproul, Robert Gordon Sproul, Jr., Wallace Sterling, Wakefield Taylor, Robert Underbill, Garff Wilson, and Pete L. Yzaquirre. "The Women's Faculty Club of the University of California at Berkeley, 1919- 1982." 1983. 312 p. Includes interviews with Josephine Smith. Margaret Murdock, Agnes Robb, May Dornin, Josephine Miles, Gudveig Gordon-Britland, Elizabeth Scott, Marian Diamond, Mary Ann Johnson, Eleanor Van Horn, and Katherine Van Valer Williams. 2/89 400 Biography JAMES B. KENDRICK Address 615 Spruce Street Berkeley, Calif. 94707 Born Lafayette, Indiana, October 21, 1920 Education Grades 1-2, Lafayette, Indiana Grades 3-12, Davis, California. Graduated from Davis High School, 1938. Undergraduate, Univ. of Calif., Berkeley, 1938-1942 Graduated with BA in Botany/Genetics, 1942 with Honors . Gradute School, Univ. of Wisconsin, 1942-44, 1946-47. Graduated with Ph.D. in Plant Pathology, 1947. Educational Honors Phi Beta Kappa, UC Berkeley, 1942 Sigma Xi, Univ. Wisconsin, 1944 Phi Sigma, Univ. Wisconsin, 1944 Armed Services U. S. Army, Medical Department, 1944-46, P.F.C. Employment Univ. of Calif. Citrus Experiment Station, Riverside, June 1, 1947- Junior Plant Pathologist, California Agricultural Experiment Station. Professor of Plant Pathology and Plant Pathologist in the California Agricultural Experiment Station, 1961. Chairman, Department of Plant Pathology, UC Riverside, 1963-68. Vice President — Agricultural Sciences, April 1, 1968-1977, University of California. Vice President — Agricultural Sciences and Director, California Agricultural Experiment Station, 1973- 1900. 401 Vice President — Agricultural Sciences, Director, California Agricultural Experiment Station, and Director, Cooperative Extension, 1975-1980, University of California. Vice President — Agriculture and University Services, 1977-1983, University of California. Vice President — Agriculture and Natural Resources, 1983-86, University of California. Retired October 1, 1986 as Vice President — Agriculture and Natural Resources Emeritus and Professor of Plant Pathology Emeritus. Professional Associations Member, American Phytopathological Society Associate Editor of Journal, 1965-68 Member of Governing Council, 1968-70 Member, American Association for the Advancement of Science; Fellow of the Association, Chairman of Section 0 (Agriculture), 1978. Member, Agricultural Research Institute; Member of Governing Board, 1974-76. Member, Council on Agricultural Sciences and Technology; Member of Board of Directors, 1983-87. Member, International Society of Plant Pathology; Member of the Council 1968-73. Former Member, American Institute of Biological Sciences. National Association, State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges : Chairman, Council of Administrative Heads of Agriculture, 1971-72. Chairman, the Division of Agriculture, 1972-73- Member of Association's Executive Committee, 1974-76, 1978-79- Chairman, Western Association of State Agricultural Experiment Station Directors, 1975. 402 Professional Activities Universi tywide Member of Academic Senate Committees on Educational Policy, Budget and Personnel, and Capital Outlay. Academic Council, Vice Chair, 1967-68. State Member, California State Board of Food and Agriculture, 1968-84. Member, California Chamber of Commerce, Agriculture Section 1968-86. Chairman, California-Scientific Review Panel for Air Resources Board, 1987- National Member, Secretary of Agriculture Committee to Review Federal/State Agricultural Research Relationships, 1968-69. Member, Secretary of Agriculture Committee to Review Federal Agricultural Research Facilities. Member, Secretary of Agriculture Committee on Agricultural Research Policy, 1973-76. Member of U.S. Congress Office of Technology Assessment Committee on Review of Agricultural Research in the U.S., 1980-81. Chairman, U.S. Congress Office of Technology Assessment Policy Committee on Water Use Technology in U.S. Semi- Arid Agriculture, 1981-82. Member of Office of Science and Technology Policy Executive Office of the President-USA, Ad Hoc Committee to Review Critical Issues in American Agricultural Research, 1982. Member, Advisory Committee for Region V of U.S. Forest Service, 1970-75. Consultant to Cornell University University of Arizona University of Nevada Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University Texas A&M University - Of ta« - 3 - 403 International Member, Policy Committee, University of California- University of Chile Convenio, 1968-76. Member, Quinquennial Review Team for the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics, Hyderabad, India, 1978. Member, California State Agricultural Missions to China, 1979, and Israel, 1982. Consultant to Alberta (Canada) Department of Agriculture, 1981, 1986. Non-Professional Activities Member Riverside Kiwanis Club, 1963-68, Second Vice- President, 1968. Member, Calvary Presbyterian Church, Riverside, 1948- 68. Member of Board of Deacons, Board of Elders, and Choir. Member, Victoria Golf and Country Club, 1955-68. Member, Commonwealth Club of California, 1968-82. Member, First Congregational Church of Berkeley, 1976 to present; Chair, Personnel Committee 1985-86. Member of Mira Vista Golf and Country Club, 1970 to present . Member, Board of Directors, Guide Dogs for the Blind, 1982 to present. Avards and Honors Senior Post-Doctoral Fellowship, National Science Foundation, 1961, for sabbatical study leave to Cambridge University and Rothamsted Experiment Station, England . Chancellor's Award, University Service, Riverside Campus of the University of California, 1967- Elected to Honorary Life Membership in the California Agricultural Commissioners Association, 1986. The 1986 Agricultural Research Leadership Award, Spon sored by the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges and the U. S. Department of Agriculture Office of Cooperative State Research Service. 404 MEMORIAL SERVICE FOR JAMES B. KENDRICK David P. Gardner, President February 22, 1989 University of California Berkeley I am honored that the Kendrick family has asked me to speak at this memorial service. Jim was a friend and colleague of nearly 20 years. He was also a loving son, husband, and father; and today we seek to record our common affection and esteem for this uncommon man, one who touched our lives in such enduring ways, and who, in his life of service to others, left the world a better place for having lived. On behalf of the Kendrick family — Jim's wife, Evelyn; his son, Douglas; his daughter, Janet; his mother, Violet, and the other family members — let me thank all of you for joining us for this celebration of Jim's life. As many of you know, Jim's involvement with the University started early. His father was a noted and well-liked plant pathologist at the Davis campus, so Jim practically grew up at the University, and his decision to attend UC Berkeley was a natural one. His original career choice was not agriculture — it was premed — but he recounts in his oral history that he was influenced by his father's comment that every educated person should have some knowledge of botany. He was also influenced by the fact that his father was footing the bill for his 405 2 education, or at least most of it, so it seemed only appropriate to take some courses that his father considered important. Of course it turned out to be a perfect match of individual and discipline — as it also turned out to be for his brother, who ultimately raised the number of plant pathologists in the Kendrick family to three. Although he excelled in his field, he was not wholly preoccupied with academic studies, as Evelyn can attest. He once said that when he was in high school the most important part of his day began at 2:00 — after formal classes were over and he could immerse himself in football or basketball or track. Although shorter than the typical high jumper, he excelled in this sport because he developed a technique to get over the hurdles rapidly without much wasted motion — a good description of how he approached matters generally. And it was in high school that he and Evelyn met, and thus began a remarkable partnership that endured and immeasurably enriched both of their lives, and the lives and causes they touched and influenced with such effect and meaning. Jim's approach to life was laced with a marvelous and quietly understated sense of humor. It was one of his most admirable qualities, as the following story makes evident. In 1947 Jim was hired at UC's Citrus Experiment Station at 406 3 Riverside, a world-famous facility, where he served for 21 years with distinction and effect. He enjoyed telling the story about his departure from OCR in 1968 to become UC's vice president for agriculture, a position of major importance both in the University and in our State. The campus gave a farewell reception for him at which he was presented with a framed copy of his 1947 appointment paper as a memento. It was only when he got around to actually reading it that he found that even though he had been hired at an annual salary of $3700, his position had actually been approved for $3900 — "Somebody had decided to save some money," was his wry comment, followed by a characteristically full smile, with eyes twinkling and that unique look of patient expectation that his plight would be seen by others with the same good-naturedness as he viewed it himself. That was surely one of the least prophetic salary decisions ever made at UCR. Jim liked people and was always involved in nearly as many community and University activities as Evelyn has been — which is saying something. For example, during his Riverside days, Jim was once asked to join the Riverside Kiwanis Club, but resisted because he didn't think his other commitments would give him time to participate in the Club's activities. He was talked into joining, however, by a good friend who told him he wouldn't have to do anything — just attend the 407 4 luncheons and enjoy the company of the members. Jim joined and within a month he was introducing the speaker; within another month he was the song leader; ultimately he wound up on the board of directors for the club, and when he left UCR for the University's vice presidency in 1968, he was first vice president of Kiwanis, scheduled to become president the following year. The idea of "just attending" was an utterly foreign notion to him — to the lasting benefit of all those service organizations and other institutions with which he affiliated himself during his lifetime. Who, for example, will be able to attend the Berkeley Faculty Club's annual Christmas Feast without remembering Jim Kendrick singing with the Monks and cheering everyone within earshot? He not only sang with assurance, because he had a fine voice, but sang because he enjoyed it, enjoyed the company of the other Monks, enjoyed the setting and the songs, and enjoyed helping others usher in the Christmas Season. His style was always to include people, not to exclude them, and to break down barriers that separate people by his warm and informal manner. When he took a sabbatical at Cambridge University in 1961-2 he was troubled by the formality that existed between professional researchers and their graduate students. So he and Evelyn had Jim's graduate students in 408 5 for visits, for meals, and even to travel together, and in the process, I understand, made some lifelong friends and acquired some lifelong memories. What he did at Cambridge was entirely consistent with his approach at UC Riverside, where as a department chair he introduced the practice of inviting faculty and students to meet together on a regular and informal basis, to hear from another colleague or visiting professor. These discussions fostered friendships, helped to make graduate students feel at home, and they even learned something as well. This practice — which Jim dubbed the Conversazione — is still thriving in the Plant Pathology Department at UCR, a monument to Jim's gift for bringing people together. Jim was also not a man to wait for others to do the job. When he was at Riverside, for example, he, Dan Aldrich, and other faculty decided that the campus needed a faculty club. So they located an army surplus building — they didn't bother much with architectural niceties in those pioneering days — and raised the money to buy it by selling bonds to themselves and to staff at the Citrus Experiment Station. They then asked the campus administration and The Regents for permission to develop the building on campus. The Regents, who have always known a good deal when they saw it, agreed, and even paid for the construction of the foundation. 409 6 After the foundation was finished, the staff of the experiment station proceeded to put the building — which had arrived in several pieces — together. Jim and Dan Aldrich started laying bricks for the fireplace. But they did not fully appreciate the lack of fit between the task at hand and the skills needed to accomplish it. When the chimney reached just above the roof they noticed it was beginning to lean a bit from the perpendicular. Then it began to lean a lot from the perpendicular. They tried to adjust for it, but finally, recognizing that they had reached the limits of their bricklaying talents, gave in and hired a professional to finish the job. Most people, of course, under comparable conditions would not have started building the fireplace at all, and even if they had would have stopped putting bricks on the "alleged" fireplace well before it reached the roof off-center, but not Jim and Dan. For years they laughed about this highly evident expression of their determination and uneven possession of skills and talent. It is worth noting that to this day the chimney on the University Club makes an interesting angle before it straightens out — a memorial to their enthusiasm if not to their technical skill. I first met Jim after his Riverside days — in 1971, when he 410 7 was vice president for agriculture and I had just become one of UC's vice presidents. When I arrived at the Office of the President, I found among my fellow vice presidents a friendly and outgoing gentleman whom I instantly and instinctively liked, and who went out of his way to befriend and encourage a then young and somewhat confused new colleague. Jim's informal manner and common touch gave little evidence of the formidable knowledge he possessed of California agriculture, the influence he wielded in State and national agricultural circles, and the complicated and consequential administrative burdens that he so skillfully and without affectation carried on the University's behalf. He was a man, I quickly found, who cared about others, who cared about the service he was rendering, and who cared deeply about the University of California and the noble cause it sought to advance. During almost 40 years of continuous service to the University of California, Jim was a major player who helped define and shape the issues during a period of far-reaching transformation in agriculture, not just in California but nationally and internationally as well. At the time of his retirement in 1986, the Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources, which he headed, was — and of course still is — regarded as one of the world's major sources of agricultural research, extension, and public service in the world, much of that reputation the direct result of the energy and vision he 411 8 brought to his role as the University's senior administrator in agriculture and chief spokesperson on agricultural issues. In my professional dealings with Jim, I found him to be a person of unimpeachable integrity. He was direct and informed, seeking always to do what was best and in doing so sought out the means most sensitive to the feelings and views of others. He imbued moments of tension and difficulty with a quiet and well-timed sense of humor and common sense. He was a decent man, giving of himself, proud of his University and its accomplishments, and appreciative of the opportunity it had afforded him to express his gifts and talents in such significant and consequential ways. He helped me, as he did countless others, when I was a young vice president and colleague; I depended on him when I was asked to serve as president. Few have served the University with such unstinting devotion, effect, and skill as did Jim Kendrick for nearly 40 years. And I am confident that he would want me to say today, what we all gathered here already knew, that his ability to render such service was not just helped but assisted immeasurably by the comparable commitment that Evelyn brought to their enduring and unique relationship, both in encouraging and supporting Jim and in the contributions and service she has herself rendered over these many years as well. 412 9 Jim's life was rich in fruitful paradoxes: he was an individualist, never afraid to speak his own mind, who worked all his life to create a sense of community around him; an accomplished scientist who never lost the common touch; a distinguished public leader whose deepest commitments were reserved for his family, his church, his many friends, and his University; a man who could dream large dreams and yet never lose sight of the value of the individual person and the individual life. It was Kierkegaard who said that "Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards." Looking back on Jim's life, we celebrate today his warmth, his generosity in giving of himself in so many ways, the human touch that made him deeply loved. To Evelyn and other members of the Kendrick family, we grieve with you, share the burden of your loss, and mourn Jim's death. But as with you, it will be his life that we happily recall and in so doing enduringly enrich our own. I wish now to conclude these brief remarks, not with my words, but with Evelyn's. Last year, the University's oral history program at Berkeley interviewed Jim about his life and times with the University. It is now in the final stages of preparation and will be a valued addition to the 413 10 University and to its history and development. But it will also be a source of pleasure and comfort to Evelyn who just in recent weeks had an opportunity, as did Jim, to read the text. Evelyn wrote a brief letter of thanks to Ann Lage, who worked with Jim on this project, on February 5, just a few days ago, and I believe that you will welcome, just as I did, hearing what Evelyn had to say in her own words: Dear Ann — I have read to Jim both the Introduction by David Gardner and your Preface. He was very pleased with both, and very appreciative. I doubt you are aware of it, but you have delivered into my hands one of the greatest gifts I could have received — a copy of Jim's complete but unpublished oral history. As I sit in the room with Jim, his life fragile and quietly fading, I read of his young, disciplined energies and enthusiasm. I know the story beginning to end, but reliving it all just now helps to put sadness in the shadow of gratitude and joy. Thank you. Sincerely, Eveyln 414 11 Evelyn and members of the family, I hope that this service and the gathering of family and friends today in memory of our dear friend Jim will help you put "sadness in the shadow of gratitude and joy." ANN LAGE B.A., University of California, Berkeley, with major in history, 1963 M.A. , University of California, Berkeley, history, 1965 Post-graduate studies, University of California, Berkeley, 1965-66, American history and education; Junior College teaching credential, State of California Chairman, Sierra Club History Committee, 1978-1986; oral history coordinator, 1974-present Interviewer/Editor, Regional Oral History Office, in the fields of conservation and natural resources, land use, university history, California political history, 1976-present . 1*117