It was 30 years ago today

The Division of Biological Sciences in the '70s

In 1973, The Spectator, a campus newspaper that was the forerunner to UC Davis Magazine, the campus's alumni magazine, reported on UC Davis' academic progress. The following is how the paper described the biological sciences program:

The biological sciences program is actually a division drawing contributions from three departments each in Letters and Science, and in the [College of] agricultural and environmental sciences. It is an academic area literally bursting at the seams. Heavy enrollment is crowding administrators into a decision that could limit future bio sci admissions [limits were never enacted].

Three years before the above description was published, the Division of Biological Sciences had been established to provide a new organizational framework for undergraduate biology. An intercollege unit, the division linked the Departments of Bacteriology (later renamed Microbiology), Botany, and Zoology in the College of Letters and Science with the three biology departments (Animal Physiology, Biochemistry and Biophysics, and Genetics) in the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences.

While the undergraduate biological sciences programs were bursting at the seams, the campus's graduate programs in biological sciences were not going unnoticed. A February 1971 article in The Spectator began, "The American Council on Education last month reported what most people familiar with the Davis campus have always known or suspected: UCD is a bastion of strength in the biological sciences." The statement referred to the council's rankings of the biological sciences graduate programs, all of which were in the top 25 out of 130 institutions surveyed.

The number of division faculty members increased markedly during the 1970s. (Twenty-three percent of the division's current faculty members began their careers here in the 1970s.) Art Shapiro, professor of evolution and ecology, recalls that by the '70s, the Department of Zoology "had become so intellectually diverse that two 'area committees' were formed to oversee its teaching and research programs. These were called 'organismal and environmental biology' and 'cell and molecular biology,' familiarly known as 'skin in' and 'skin out,' respectively."

Completed in 1971, Briggs Hall was built to accommodate the increase in students and faculty members. It housed the departments of genetics, biophysics and biochemistry, animal physiology, and entomology as well as wildlife and fisheries biology and the medical school's Department of Biological Chemistry. Mark McNamee, the current dean of the division, joined the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics in 1975 and recalls, "Everything at that time revolved around the department as the academic home, so you rarely knew anyone in another department."

The division was initially administered by an associate dean, who had a joint appointment in the campus's two colleges. In 1979, Don McLean became the first divisional dean and reported directly to the chancellor.