The UCSB Alumni Affairs Department wished the entire campus a happy 67th birthday today, Founders’ Day 2011, because the campus was established as part of the University of California system on this day in 1944. It seems appropriate, in the context of such an historical note, to point out that 2011 also marks the 38th anniversary of the UCSB Department of Geography.
Actually, UCSB Geography didn’t become an official Department until 1974—in 1963, it was a fledgling Geography Program begun under the direction of the Dean of College of Letters and Science: “In 1961, the first lecturer was hired to teach geography exclusively; a second came in 1962. In 1963, the geography “program,” which had been administered first by the Department of Social Sciences, then the Department of Sociology-Anthropology, was put under the direct charge of the dean of the College of Letters and Science. The dean hired two new lecturers. One of these was Berl Golomb from UCLA, who remained until 1971, struggling to build a department without the autonomy, funds, and tenure-advancing power that a departmental structure brings. At this time, the program was located in a marine barracks building, a two-story wood frame “temporary” bungalow known simply as Building 406. In fall 1966, the geography program began offering a Bachelor of Arts degree” (source).
UCSB has come a long way since those shaky beginnings: “The rise of the program at UCSB is remarkable in itself. From humble origins as the provider of a few geography service classes within UCSB’s undergraduate program, the department has risen to join the legion of the highest-ranked graduate programs in the nation, according to the National Research Council (NRC 1995), in only 30 years” (Ibid.). Today, UCSB is arguably the highest ranked graduate program in the nation; the 2010 NRC Assessment of Research-Doctorate Programs rates UCSB Geography as number one in the nation at best or number six at the very least, depending upon the weights given to the assorted criteria used (for more on this subject, see the Department’s Awards and Rankings web site page).
Editor’s note: For more about the history of UCSB Geography, see the June 10, 2009 article “In the Beginning: UCSB and the Department of Geography” and our web site pages on the Department’s History.
