IN MEMORIAM

Ivan Hinderaker

Chancellor Emeritus

UC Riverside

1916 – 2007

Ivan Hinderaker served as chancellor of the University of California, Riverside for 15 years that were often turbulent both on and off campus. The change from semesters to quarters, the reorganization of agriculture and the biological sciences, the transition from an undergraduate liberal arts campus to a research university with graduate programs, the introduction of professional schools, Vietnam and its accompanying campus unrest – all of these took place on Ivan’s watch. Each of these issues, and others, could have harmed the campus. Ivan’s vision and leadership, his clear thinking and ability to communicate with everyone, and his balanced approach to all issues helped the campus negotiate these various shoals and establish the basis for what UCR has become today.

Ivan came to UCR in 1964 after significant career elements first in his native Minnesota and then in California. Born in 1916 in Hendricks, Minnesota, he graduated from St. Olaf College in 1938, then went to the University of Minnesota as a research assistant in the Public Administration Training Center, where he met his future wife Birk. He was a research intern in the Minnesota League of Cities. He was elected to the (non-partisan) Minnesota Legislature in 1940 at age 24 while still in graduate school. When Pearl Harbor was attacked, Ivan finished his MA thesis quickly in order to go to Washington DC and eventually join the United States Air Force. After three years he was discharged in Sacramento and discovered that he liked California. After he returned to the University of Minnesota to finish his doctorate in 1948, and with competing job offers from Stanford and UCLA, he joined the faculty of the Department of Political Science at UCLA.

Ivan was at UCLA for 14 years, the last two (1960 to 1962) as chair of the Department of Political Science. During 1959-60 he was on leave to be speech writer for Secretary of the Interior Fred Seaton. As chair, he recruited Chuck Young, among other notable future academic leaders. During this time he periodically wrote articles for the Los Angeles Times; he also served as a consultant for Elections and Reapportionment Committee of Assembly. Both of these experiences produced many friends and acquaintances in the California Legislature and other branches of government, and these relationships would serve him – and UCR – well in future years.

In the summer of 1962 Ivan joined the fledgling University of California, Irvine (UCI) campus as Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs. Dan Aldrich had just been appointed chancellor of UCI in January 1962, and the campus opened its doors to students in 1965. Among Ivan’s primary responsibilities was the recruitment of deans and department chairs. One of his key appointments was Jack Peltason (who would later become President of the University of California) as dean of the College of Letters and Sciences.

The dedication of the UCI campus was held on June 20, 1964. The next morning Harry Wellman, Vice President of the University of California, came to Ivan’s office and said that President Clark Kerr and he wanted Ivan to become Chancellor of the University of California, Riverside. Then-Chancellor Herman Spieth had earlier announced his retirement effective June 30, 1964. There was a search in process but Ivan was not aware that he was being considered, so Wellman’s request came as a complete surprise.

Ivan quickly accepted the Chancellorship at UCR. He recognized three major challenges that the campus would face in the coming years. The biggest challenge was the (lack of) relationship between the Citrus Research Center/Agricultural Experiment Station (CRC/AES) and the College of Letters and Science. When UCR opened its doors to undergraduate students in 1954, the CRC/AES had already been in place for nearly a half century and was well established as a successful research center. For a number of years the new College of Letters and Science and the CRC/AES co-existed with little interaction. When the Regents of the University of California declared UCR a general campus in 1959, a number of interrelated issues arose with respect to UCR’s mission and how it would be met. One issue was the transition from a college devoted solely to a classical undergraduate education in the Liberal Arts – an ideal that many of the founding faculty held dear – to a campus with graduate education and professional schools.

The second challenge was that as master’s and doctoral programs loomed, it was unclear what the relationship between the College of Letters and Science and the CRC/AES should be with respect to graduate education. These two major issues were still unresolved when Ivan arrived as UCR’s new chancellor in 1964. The third major challenge that Ivan recognized clearly was UCR’s geographical disadvantage in relation to other UC campuses.

On the other hand Ivan recognized that there were tremendous actual and prospective assets. Riverside was a campus of the University of California, and as he put it, “Figuratively, I kept the great seal of the University of California well polished and clutched tightly to my breast.” Furthermore, the growth in enrollment from the initial 1500 student population projection to roughly 4000 when Ivan arrived in 1964 had brought actual and promised resources, including a substantial and aggressive expansion of the capital facilities. The University was committed to seeing through – and supporting financially – the difficult transition to a general campus with University of California quality in every area. And the existing quality of instruction and research was indeed very high. UCR had already attracted national attention for the high percentage of its graduates who went on to graduate and professional degree programs, and for their successful competition for national awards such as Woodrow Wilson and National Science Foundation fellowships. UCR received authorization for a Sigma Xi chapter in 1963, and was the third UC campus (after Berkeley and UCLA) to gain Phi Beta Kappa status. A handful of doctoral programs had already begun by 1964 and others were planned. Two research institutes (CRC/AES and the Statewide Air Pollution Research Center) existed and a third (the Dry Lands Research Institute) was being planned. Not the least of the assets that Ivan recognized was the potential strength to be gained by combining the expertise of the College of Letters and Science biological sciences faculty (which was heavily focused on basic research) with that of the CRC/AES scientists who were much more oriented to research concerned with agricultural applications.

Because of UCR’s geographical location, Ivan realized that in order to compete for a robust undergraduate student population UCR would have to offer a range of attractive degree programs beyond the usual array of liberal arts majors. With a unique structural cooperation between the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences and the Graduate School of Administration (GSA), in 1973 UCR created the Administrative Studies Program, which except for that at Berkeley was the only UC undergraduate program for prospective administration majors. The curriculum drew heavily from the social sciences with administration courses added by the GSA, and both units had to agree on the curriculum and any changes in the major requirements. The degree was awarded by the College rather than the GSA.

An even greater challenge was the creation of the Biomedical Sciences Program, in which UCR combined with the UCLA medical school to offer a seven-year combined undergraduate and medical degree. The first five years were offered at UCR and covered the undergraduate degree as well as the first two years of medical school. The program proved very effective in recruiting large numbers of excellent undergraduate students to UCR; after the first three years the top 24 students were selected to continue into the medical school curriculum and eventually to move to UCLA to complete the medical degree. Most of the other students remained at UCR to take other undergraduate degrees, and a substantial number of these students went on to pursue medical degrees at other universities. As the proposed program was being discussed, there was much concern expressed about the potential drain of resources from other parts of the UCR campus – the age-old concern whenever a new program is proposed. With support from the College of Natural and Agricultural Sciences and after a great deal of politicking in Sacramento, the resources were found, Ivan’s longer range vision prevailed, and the Biomedical Sciences Program has long been one of the uniquely defining features of the UCR campus and indeed forms the core for the medical school now being proposed.

The concept of professional schools had no place under the founding concept of UCR as a strictly undergraduate liberal arts college. However, with UCR’s transition to a general campus and the accompanying acceptance of graduate-level education, the path for prospective professional schools was cleared, and UCR’s first two professional schools were created during Ivan’s chancellorship. The Education Department was part of the College of Letters and Science and asked to be broken out into its own structure; the School of Education was created with little opposition in 1968. The Graduate School of Administration was established in 1970 against much more resistance, particularly since the campus was not awarded dedicated resources to start the school. Instead, resources had to be taken from the campus’s overall pool, thus decreasing those available to other units. The GSA was thus begun on a shoestring. Ivan was convinced of the importance of the GSA and was proud of its role in UCR’s spectrum of educational opportunities.

The most difficult problem of all with respect to the campus mission was the relationship between the CRC/AES and the biological scientists in the College of Letters and Science. It was here that Ivan’s leadership qualities were put to the sternest test and were found fully up to the challenge, and it is arguably his most significant legacy to present-day UCR that he met this challenge – and prevailed. The overarching goal was to exploit the potential synergies and combined strengths of the biological sciences faculty who were distributed across both the College of Letters and Science and the CRC/AES. Resistance to a merger of these scientists into a single unit came from the college, which feared the loss of one of its substantial strengths, as well as from the CRC/AES, which feared the loss of its traditional orientation to applied, mission-oriented research. A committee of distinguished faculty members recommended the creation of a new unit, the College of Biological and Agricultural Sciences, to be composed of the CRC/AES and the life sciences then in the College of Letters and Science. Needless to say the process of consultation involved spirited debate, and in the end both the faculty of the College of Letters and Science and the entire Academic Senate voted heavily against the proposed reorganization. The faculty votes were not binding, however, since matters of organization are the prerogative of the administration. Ivan recognized that there was a window of opportunity for action that would eventually close, and that despite near-term opposition, the long-term impact of the proposed reorganization would be a solid basis for the development of the biological sciences at UCR. He therefore proposed the change to the President and Regents, and the reorganization went into effect July 1, 1968.

Ivan initiated a Chancellor’s Column in the student newspaper and this helped to establish a positive relationship between him and the student leadership. In his first column in this format, Ivan made it clear that he valued student input and opinion. In response, then Student Body President Bob Holcomb wrote that “the new administration has indicated the desire to listen to student recommendations and consider them on merit. Let me assure you that the Executive Council has the same view toward cooperation ….” These positive attitudes served the campus well during the period of Ivan’s leadership.

Various crises threatened the fabric of the student-administrative relationship. In 1966 the council wished to send a letter asking President Johnson to use force against Selma, Alabama, to prevent the city from stopping African Americans from registering to vote. Understanding that the University of California regulations in existence at that time forbade official student organizations from participating in extra-campus political action, Ivan threatened to vacate the council for the remainder of the academic year if it persisted with its intention. Five members of the council, including then-student body president Bob Holcomb and other student officials, resigned from their offices. (Some of those five subsequently said that they knew the Chancellor was right in his position.)

Despite this, Ivan maintained close personal friendships with the students involved and enjoyed their respect for one another. Ivan took strong stands on other issues that aggravated students, but at the same time he was a passionate guardian of their views and their rights to express them in a supportive environment. When Ivan learned that during one demonstration some campus officer had called on the Riverside Police Department to take pictures of the demonstrators, he made a public statement that this would never happen again. In another demonstration, students were asked to, and did, leave a clear path for patrons of the Administration Building (now Hinderaker Hall) to enter and exit; Ivan’s administration served the demonstrators coffee and donuts, and afterward the students cleaned up the area that they had occupied.

This mutual respect served the campus well during the Vietnam era. Ivan respected and honored much of the student opposition to the war. He used the powers of his office to further some of the students’ projects: for example, he encouraged student excursions into the surrounding community to explain their views on the war and their commitment to free speech. Ivan’s respect and encouragement of student views and their expressions had much to do with the fact that UCR remained by and large peaceful during this fractious period while many other universities experienced violence.

In the mid-1960s when a proposed Black Studies Department was in its germinal state, a group of students demanded a right to participate in the selection of a department chair and in the development of the curriculum and the appointment, retention, and promotion of the faculty. By the Standing Orders of the Regents, control over appointment of department chairs belongs to the chancellor, and control over courses and curricula is vested in the faculties of the various campuses. Ivan steadfastly and courteously explained to the students, as well as to delegations of leading African-American citizens of local communities, what these holdings meant and why the students’ academic degrees would not be credible if control of the academic rules and procedures were to be abdicated by the university and turned over to the students. In fact, when a leading black state Senator from Los Angeles County, Mervyn Dymally, on behalf of the black students, came to the campus to remonstrate with Ivan, the latter received him with his usual courtesy and the Senator left later after congratulating the chancellor on the cogency of his presentation.

In his 1971 commencement message, Ivan summarized his vision of the university environment as follows: “I hope that UCR will be a place where you find people will care about you and where you can enlarge your capacity to care about other people. An institution made up with students, faculty and administrators who are committed not in a token sense, but in an all out sense to try to provide genuine opportunity for all who want to learn and to build, for all who want to earn the respect of others, for all who want to feel pride in their person and in their heritage. I hope that UCR will be a place where you will grow to care about the institutions of our society, not in blind acceptance of everything about them, but through asking the questions which need to be asked, through your own evaluation of institutional strengths and weaknesses, through learning how to use these institutions to accomplish worthy objectives.”

Ivan and Birk were ardent supporters of the arts and the cultural life of the campus. They helped to organize many spontaneous arts groups and coalesced support for the arts through the establishment of the Chancellor’s Ball for the Arts, the proceeds from which enabled the creation of the Chancellor’s Awards in the arts. Ivan’s role in bringing the Keystone-Mast stereograph collection to UCR, to join the Bingham collection of photographic equipment, was instrumental in providing the framework for the UCR-California Museum of Photography (UCR-CMP), one of the country’s leading museums of photography and photographic apparatus. Ivan was personally involved in making each of these significant acquisitions become real, as he was in acquiring the Friends of Photography Collection for the UCR-CMP.

Beginning in his first years at UCLA, Ivan established excellent relationships of mutual trust and understanding with many significant politicians on both sides of the aisle. His interest in others’ views and his ability to express his own sometimes opposing views with respect stood him well over the many decades. The quality of his relationships with influential politicians served to UCR’s advantage at several key moments, such as the authorization of the Biomedical Sciences Program and, the following year, the success in overcoming Governor Jerry Brown’s prospective veto of funding for the program. When in the midst of yet another budgetary crisis there was talk of changing UCR to a CSU campus, it was in good part Ivan’s effective political connections that prevented this idea from gaining any real traction.

UCR has traditionally enjoyed very close and supportive relationships with the City of Riverside and the surrounding region. This is unfortunately not the norm for UC campuses, and in fact several campuses encounter significant community opposition to their aspirations and plans. Not so UCR, and much of this positive environment can be traced to Ivan’s desire and ability to reach out to the surrounding community. Ivan recognized clearly the value of these positive relationships, but it was more a result of his character than a pragmatic strategy designed to help the campus. Ivan simply enjoyed people, respected them, and he implicitly expected others at the campus to do likewise. The result has, over the ensuing decades, made UCR’s growth and increasing impact on the region a welcome development rather than an incursion to be resisted. Not surprisingly, the Riverside Chamber of Commerce chose Ivan Hinderaker as the first recipient of its Citizen of the Year award.

Bob Steinbrinck, a sports announcer who covered many UCR basketball and football games, writes of his friend: “Ivan Hinderaker was the perfect person at the ideal time for UCR. He was more than a leader – one who walks ahead. He was a guide, who walked beside you. And listened. His wit was gentle, his presence comfortable, his support unflagging, and his honesty went to the bone.”

We agree.

F. M. Carney
R. Ruibal
S. M. Van Gundy
D. H. Warren