University History
The University of Massachusetts
Ralph Van Meter, a horticulturist at the college since 1917, presided over the difficult transition from state college to university. During his tenure (1947-1954), the University moved with extraordinary speed to meet veterans' demands for an education that was responsive to the needs of an increasingly technological society. A School of Engineering was created under the direction of Professor George Marston, adding chemical, electrical, and mechanical engineering to existing agricultural programs. The School of Business Administration came into being in 1950, and most of the groundwork was laid for the School of Education.
If Van Meter shepherded the vast curricular expansion for the new university, his successor, young economist Jean Paul Mather (1954-1960), was responsible for the major growth of the facilities needed to accommodate all the new schools and students. In 1954, President Mather commissioned a Master Plan that, with some later revision, laid out the modern campus. Several new dormitories spread up the slopes of Orchard Hill. The Student Union Building was erected, together with Machmer Hall, Dickinson Hall, Bartlett Hall, the School of Education Building, and the first sections of the sprawling Morrill Science Center. During the Mather years, except in isolated pockets, the physical environment of old Mass Aggie disappeared forever.
The transformation which had begun under President Mather accelerated, indeed exploded, after his successor, John W. Lederle, arrived in the Fall of 1960. Lederle, who had come from Michigan with a strong background in public administration, communicated his vision in his inaugural address: "I have come to feel that what we have here is potentially a giant." Within the next decade, the student body tripled to nearly 16,000, and the number of faculty, together with the operating budget, quadrupled. The graduate program, which had evolved slowly since the 1890s, now became a major force in the life of the University.
Research centers such as the Population Research Institute, the Polymer Research Institute, and the Research Computing Center proliferated. Lederle fought successfully for fiscal autonomy for the University even as the Commonwealth, in 1965, moved to place UMass and all of the state and community colleges under the general supervision of the Massachusetts Board of Education. Much of this turbulent growth occurred during a period of vigorous student dissent growing out of the Civil Rights struggle and the nation's deepening involvement in Vietnam.
Perhaps the most significant achievement of the Lederle years was the creation of a branch campus in Boston. Acting on legislative authority granted in June, 1964, a task force began recruiting faculty and locating a site. The first freshmen were able to enter UMass Boston in the Fall of 1965 due to the extraordinary energy of faculty planners from Amherst such as botanist Arthur Gentile and Paul Gagnon, Professor of French History. The Boston campus was originally located in the Boston Consolidated Gas Company building and surrounding locations in Boston's Park Square. Since 1974, the campus has occupied facilities constructed at Columbia Point on Boston Harbor. From its inception, the Boston campus has actively sought to extend first-rate educational opportunities. Henry Goodell's determination that culture should "flourish in the homes of the masses" is firmly embedded in the educational goals for the students served by the University.
A third University campus was created during the Lederle years with the planning and construction of a teaching hospital and medical science building at Worcester. By 1986 the Medical School at Worcester had enrolled approximately 900 students, residents, and fellows; the University Hospital had over 11,000 admissions and over 190,000 outpatient visits in that year. This state-wide expansion was matched by the dizzying pace of construction on the Amherst campus -- the School of Business Administration building, Boyden Physical Education Plant, Holdsworth Hall, the massive Southwest residential complex, Herter Hall, Whitmore Administration Building, and the Murray D. Lincoln Campus Center and Parking Garage were all completed. When John Lederle left office in 1970, Tobin Hall, the University Library Tower, and the (Lederle) Graduate Research Center were under construction, and plans for the Fine Arts Center were ready for bid.
Beginning in the 1970s, the University entered a period of consolidation and administrative reorganization. The President's Office was moved to Boston and the office of Chancellor became the primary administrative position at each campus. In 1981, the Massachusetts Board of Regents was given policy-making authority over all of the State's post-secondary institutions. This vast state-wide system seems a far cry from the small, tightly-knit Mass Aggie community of the not-too-distant past. It is not uncommon to see older alumni wandering about the towering concrete structures of the Amherst campus and sadly shaking their heads. Instead of a small college surrounded by orchards and hay fields, they find an institution that looks more like a modern city. The agrarian vision of the founders of the Massachusetts Agricultural College has indeed faded, but what does remain firmly intact is their conviction that a first-rate education should be made available to all the citizens of the Commonwealth.
Credits
The content of this Web page was adapted from a series of displays created for the 1988 celebration of the 125th anniversary of the founding of the University of Massachusetts. They were produced by the then Office of Humanities Programs in the Division of Continuing Education of the University of Massachusetts Amherst and were funded by a grant from the University President’s Office. Project Director: Kerry W. Buckley; Researcher: Robert J Wilson, III.
