CHAPTER VII |
Weathering a Turbulent Era
1969 to 1976 ‘|
niversities reflect the societies of which they are a
part. The turbulence that characterized America |
in the late 1960s came to Albany in the 1969-70 i
school year. |
> In November of 1969 students erected three “Vietnamese huts” on l
the podium as a political protest, One hut was burned and a student i 1
del
arrested before students agreed to remove the remaining structures. i !
Ap
i
> A couple of students presented Acting President Allan Kuusisto |
with a bloody pig’s head as he was presiding over a University Senate |
meeting. 4 |
> Radical Left-wing attorney William Kunstler spoke to 6,000: on /
campus on March 5, 1970, raised his fist in the “power to the people” H
be salute, and told his listeners that the movement had progressed from a HH
ab “ ‘ » (Opposite) Dialogue Days took place in Match B |
a period of “protest” to a stage of “resistance. 1970 when Acting President Allan Kuusisto i
ay > One week later, students, angered over a tenure decision, smashed ©@neeled classes following student semen: '
He strations over the University’s failure to renew
i | : windows in the administration building. a faculty member's contract and other issues.
He
i
a
i 155
i
it
Representative Ogden Reid addresses a
Vietnam Moratorium, October 15, 1969.
> On March 19, fifteen students were among twenty-nine arrested for
disorderly conduct while staging a four-hour sit-in, blocking the entrance
to the Albany Induction Center. g
> On March 19-20, classes were suspended for two “Dialogue Days.”
Students and faculty pondered the University’s problems in department
meetings and a series of workshops. Topics included tenure decisions,
50/50 faculty-student control of the University, racism on campus,
“Student as Nigger,” and “Anarchy” (no room was scheduled and
people were urged not to attend!), Participants produced a long list of
recommendations ranging from good teacher awards to 50/50
representation on all University-wide decision-making bodies, to University
pronouncements on social, economic and moral issues.
> Some black students were involved in a fracas in the dining hall at
Colonial Quad; food service workers were assaulted and the dining hall
was vandalized, A group of black faculty and staff asserted that the
incident was a “response to a long series of real and apparent discriminatory
practices and racist attitudes , . .” at the University.
The turbulence reached a peak during May of 1970, On April 30,
President Nixon announced that American
troops had expanded the Vietnam War by
moving into Cambodia. Four days later Ohio
National Guard troops fired on and killed
four protesting students at Kent State
University. The Albany campus like others
all over the country exploded in protests.
On May 4, students entered the Library,
threw books off shelves, dumped others on
the ground outside and tried to burn them,
and broke windows. Two days later, students
from Albany and elsewhere marched
downtown to the Capitol, protesting both
American involvement in Vietnam and the
state of American race relations. The march
occurred without violence. But that night on
campus Molotov cocktails were thrown at
the Administration Building, and fire bombs
started blazes in both Colonial and Dutch Quads;
the former’s Flag Room was destroyed, Students
struck in an attempt to shut down the University.
The administration organized a “crisis
committee,” and faculty and staff held nightly
fire watches at both academic buildings and
residence halls. The SUNY Trustees responded
to student strikes by ruling that all campuses
were to remain open. Faculty meetings on May
8, 11, and 12 arranged a compromise by which
student strikers were given several alternative
ways of receiving credit for their courses. Most
undergraduate courses ceased operation while
students briefly operated a “School of Suppressed
Studies;” graduate classes were largely unaffected.
Commencement passed without incident,
students departed the campus, and Acting
President Kuusisto left for a less revolutionary
presidency at Hobart and William Smith Colleges.
What had happened? Some euphorically
believed that “the revolution,” which would
transform the flawed world in which they lived,
had come. Others gloomily concluded that the
University like American society was “coming apart,” With the advantage
of hindsight we can now understand how several developments came
together to disrupt the University in the Spring of 1970,
Albany students became increasingly politicized in the late 1960s.
Campus Viewpoint, published for incoming students, for the first time
in 1968 included a section on “Political Concerns” which listed student
political organizations ranging from SDS (Students for a Democratic
Society) on the Left to YAF (Young Americans for Freedom) on the
Right. The range and number of such organizations testified to the
breadth of students’ interest in improving their world, and they began
to pursue their political goals with an aggressiveness that would have
been unthinkable at the old College for Teachers. Albany students (and
many faculty) focused on three areas in the late 1960s: race relations,
William Kunstler, speaking on campus to a
crowd of 6,000 on March 5, 1970, in the
University gym, told students the movement
had progressed from “protest” to “resistance.”
157
A March 1970 protest on the steps of the Capi-
tol in support of the Black Panthers, (Photo by
Martin Benjamin, ’71.)
158
undergraduate instruction, and
Vietnam.
Student concern about race
1940s, but the formation in 1964 of
a new civil rights group, “Freedom
Council,” marked a new surge of
interest. Faculty and students in the
mid 1960s enthusiastically supported
Martin Luther King’s movement and
the federal legislation that emerged
in 1965. Albany students went south
to help in sitins and voter registration
drives. During these years the interest
in civil rights at Albany was mostly a white phenomenon, chiefly
because there were very few blacks on campus in the 1960s, The
assassination of Martin Luther King on April 4, 1968, changed things.
The University community was horrified and sought to make a significant
gesture to improve educational opportunities at Albany for young
blacks. Everyone applauded the establishment of a federally-subsidized
Educational Opportunities Program in the Fall of 1968, EOP provided
intensive academic help and financial aid to students who would not
otherwise be able to attend college. Many of the students were black or
Puerto Rican, all came from lower income families, and by 1969-70
enrollments reached about 365, '
With the death of Martin Luther King, “black power” challenged
“integration” as the goal of the national civil rights movement. The
change was reflected on the Albany campus. Black students, organized
in the Black Students Alliance, sought an Afro-American studies program
at Albany, and on January 10, 1969, confronted President Collins with
a sheet containing a series of demands. Collins quickly signed. He
subsequently argued that, looking at the substance rather than the
rhetoric of the demands, he had concluded that everything the BSA was
seeking was already planned. The Department of Afro-American Studies
was soon activated. By 1969-70 black militancy merged into the general
student protest activities. After the dining hall incident noted earlier,
a ae
relations dates back at least to the?
black students responded by compiling a list of thirty-seven allegations
of racism on campus, and when white students protested the shootings
at Kent State, blacks rallied to protest the concurrent shootings at
Jackson State.
A second source of student discontent in the late 1960s was
undergraduate curriculum and teaching. By the Spring of 1968 President
Collins observed that student concerns had shifted from campus social
problems such as dorm hours and alcohol on campus to academic
issues such as grading systems and faculty tenure.
Undergraduates worked to change both the grading system and
general education requirements. Many students and faculty believed
that students should have total freedom to choose their courses. They
also argued that replacing letter grades with Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory
gtades would improve education by transforming the classroom from a
competitive to a cooperative environment, S/U grading was approved
by the Senate in the Fall of 1969. Proposals to eliminate requirements
were a major focus of the “Dialogue Days” of March 1970 and were
approved by the Senate a month later.
The tenure issue was more complicated. It was traditionally granted
by the institution on recommendation of the faculty. In the 1950s,
tenure decisions at Albany were made largely on the basis of the
person’s teaching performance, But by the late 1960s, good teaching
was not enough; tenured professors
also had to be productive scholars,
Irate students complained that a
undergraduate teaching was being :
undermined by general neglect and
by the “publish or perish” syndrome.
Students pursued reform using two
strategies, First, they fought hard to
gain greater student input into the
tenure process. The University
ultimately required student evaluations
of teaching as a part of the dossier
necessary for a tenure decision, and
in some cases students served on
A September 1971 protest on Alumni Quad
against the State’s action in the Attica Prison
uprising. (Photo by Jay Rosenberg, '73.)
b VASSACR
RUKEFELL
159
The Educational Opportunities Program was
established at Albany in 1968 to provide edu-
cational and economic assistance to disadvan-
taged students. (Below) Carl Martin, right,
a counselor in the program, meets with a
student. Opposite, graduates of the program
from the Class of 1974.
160
tenure committees, Second, students vigorously protested what they
considered to be ill-considered personnel decisions. Non-renewal cased’
in psychology in the Spring of 1969 and in rhetoric and public address
in the Spring of 1970 became causes celebre and absorbed enormous
amounts of time and attention. The latter case reached a climax in
March of 1970 and was debated during the “Dialogue Days.” &
The third element in the 1969-70 upheaval was, of course, the
Vietnam War. As late as the Spring of 1964 the Albany Student Press
printed two long and sympathetic articles on an Albany sophomore
returning to school after a tour of duty with the Special Forces in Laos.
But by 1965 the effects of the draft were being felt, and student opinion
of the Vietnam War became highly critical. A Student Peace Group was
formed in 1966. In the next couple of years there were periodic “teach-
ins” and debates over the war. Senator Wayne Morse appeared on
campus to oppose it, General Maxwell Taylor defended it. In February
of 1968, students demonstrated against recruiting activities on campus
by the Dow Chemical Company, manufacturer of napalm; ten students
were arrested for disorderly conduct on grounds that they had interfered
with University business. SDS mounted a campaign to close the campus
to objectionable groups such as Dow Chemical, the CIA and the armed
forces, but 92 percent of the 3,000 students
participating in a referendum voted in favor of
an open campus. The issue of campus recruitment
by defense manufacturers remained significant
well into the 1970s, By 1969-70, Vietnam had
become a major issue; it was a central concern
in the “Dialogue Days” of March 1970, and the
Cambodian incursion and the Kent State and
Jackson State shootings provided the final fuel
for the May student uprising. All of these tissues
were further complicated by the cry of “Student
Power!” Student concerns, especially concerning
civil rights and Vietnam, often spilled over into
the community. Black students protested for
educational reform at Albany High School in
1969. In the heady days of May 1970 some
students at Albany and elsewhere contemplated sweeping through
northeastern New York to convert Americans to the causes of peace
and justice.
Most focused their search for power on the University, particularly
the Senate and the academic departments. The Senate had been organized
in 1966 as a Faculty Senate, but by 1968-69 students were seeking
membership, first on Senate councils, then on the Senate itself, Both
goals were achieved by the Fall of 1969, Students sought input and
power in departments as well. Their degree of success varied, but for
several years proponents of student power continued to argue for 50/
50 student/faculty representation on critical bodies such as tenure
committees.
Some students and faculty urged the Senate to take positions on the
key moral and political issues of the day such as Vietnam. They argued
that a university which refused to take such stands risked becoming
morally corrupt. Opponents argued that such a step could be fatal by
turning society at large against the University and asserted that the
function of a university was not to take moral or political positions but
161
Louis T. Benezet succeeded Evan Collins as
President in 1970, following a year-long term
by Acting President Kuusisto,
162
to provide an institutional framework within which dialog and learning 7
could take place. Ultimately the faculty in the Fall of 1970 approved a+
resolution, still in effect today, introduced by Hans Pohlsander and
Morris Finder, which stated that “this university . . . [is] dedicated to
the search for truth and that in its corporate capacity it does not
officially endorse any particular version of the truth be it a matter, of
political or social philosophy or of scientific theory.”
The Spring 1970 vision of a revolution disappeared in the next
few months. Instead, students turned to the techniques of single-issue
pressure politics, Students remained in the Senate and on its councils,
but their presence there was for more than a decade dependent on
annual renewal by the faculty. As the Vietnam War wound down in
the early 1970s, new issues arose, notably the feminist movement.
The Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s became the on-campus
politics of ethnic studies. Faculty in Afro-
American Studies were under enormous
pressures. They had to work hard to meet
requirements for tenure. At the same time,
their students often expected the department
to become a black cultural center with the faculty
attentive to the personal problems of black
undergraduates on a predominantly white
campus. It was little wonder that the department
often led a troubled existence in the 1970s. In
the early 1970s, Hispanic students sought and
got a Puerto Rican Studies department which
became part of a Department of Latin American,
and Caribbean Studies in the early 1980s.
The educational reforms of 1969-70 had
mixed results, S/U grading soon fell victim to
the demand of pre-professional students that
they receive letter grades required by admis-
sions officers in law and medical schools. The
curriculum free from general education
requirements lasted about a decade before
the faculty pressed for change.
Lengthy debates over how to
evaluate teaching ultimately led the
University to mandate student
evaluations of each class and to
require that teaching evaluations play
a role in tenure and promotion
decisions. Yet students continued
to protest individual tenure
decisions, leading in 1973 to the
appointment of a special committee
which clarified and regularized the
procedures to be used.
Despite the turbulence of these
years, the quality of the University’s
undergraduate education was
recognized in 1973 when Albany
was granted a long-sought and highly prized chapter of Phi Beta Kappa,
the leading national academic honorary society.
Three additional educational developments in the early 1970s deserve
note. First, the University in the early 1970s launched a new doctoral
program, the Doctor of Arts degree. The D.A. program, initiated first
in English, emphasized preparing college teachers rather than conventional
research specialists. [t was a very successful venture, both a culmination
of President Collins’ long-standing dream of a doctorate designed to
train teachers for two-year colleges and a response to the widespread
concern over the neglect of undergraduate teaching.
Second, the Fall of 1971 marked the beginning of a community
service course through which students could earn academic credit for
independent study and collateral work in community agencies. The
course institutionalized much student enthusiasm for improving the
communities in which they lived.
Third, in the Fall of 1972, Albany launched an important experiment
in undergraduate education with the formation of the James E. Allen
Collegiate Center, led by Seth Spellman of the School of Social Welfare.
Using a $100,000 Carnegie grant for start-up purposes the Allen
Center tried to do two things: shorten the length of students’ education
Students focused on gaining membership in
the University Senate in 1969, Here, Harry L.
Hamilton, professor of atmospheric science,
speaks at a Senate meeting,
163
The James E. Allen Collegiate Center, led
by Seth Spellman of the School of Social
Welfare, was an important experiment in
undergraduate education, designed to shorten
the length of study by admitting students after
eleventh grade into a high-quality interdisci-
plinary program. It fell victim to the financial
crisis of 1975-76.
164
after eleventh grade, and _
educate its students through a
high-quality inter-disciplinary
program. The Allen Centér
occupied much of the Down-
town Campus where students
and faculty constituted a close-
knit academic community, It
was a high-minded experiment
undertaken with great energy
and enthusiasm. Its final results
are still a subject of controversy.
Student admissions were disappointing, the faculty had difficulty teaching
the interdisciplinary curriculum, and the administration came to regard
the Center as unduly expensive. Thus the experiment fell victim to the
financial crisis of 1975-76.
The University saw considerable turnover in its top leadership during
the 1970s, Collins retired in June of 1969; his Academic Vice President,
Allan Kuusisto, served as Acting President through the upheavals of
1969-70. He was succeeded in the Fall of 1970 by Louis T. Benezet, a
fifty-five-year-old psychologist with a Columbia University Ph.D. and
administrative experience at four private institutions. Benezet served for
five years and was succeeded for two years by a Vanderbilt University
historian, Emmett Fields, who in 1977 returned to Vanderbilt as president.
Charles O'Reilly from the School of Social Welfare served as acting
Academic Vice President from 1969-1971 until Benezet brought in
Philip Sirotkin from an administrative post in the National Institutes of
Health. There was also turnover in the position of Dean of Graduate
Studies. In 1975 the important College of Arts and Sciences was
divided into its three component parts (Sciences and Mathematics,
Humanities and Fine Arts, and Social and Behavioral Sciences) after a
failed two-year search for a new dean.
Benezet and Sirotkin did much to regularize administrative procedures
after the almost uncontrolled growth of the 1960s, But the lack of
leadership continuity complicated University efforts to deal with the
by admitting qualified students ”
uu
two succeeding crises of these years: the attack on Albany's doctoral
programs and the financial crisis and reorganization of 1975-76.
Just as demographics had driven the rapid expansion of Albany in.
the 1960s, so demographics by the early 1970s suggested a need to slow
down. Analysts, predicting a nationwide decline in the number of
college-age young people, became concerned about a potential glut of
Ph.D.s. In New York the Regents and Commissioner of Education
Ewald Nyquist picked up on these concerns, imposed a two-year (1971-
73) statewide moratorium on all new doctoral programs, and appointed
a Regents Commission on Doctoral Education, chaired by Robben W.
Flemming, president of the University of Michigan. The Flemming
Commission urged the state to sustain the high
quality of established programs rather than try
to improve low-quality programs. It also suggested
that it would be less costly for the state to
subsidize students at private institutions than
to provide additional doctoral education for
them at public institutions. Accordingly the
Regents adopted a program of concentrating
programs at a relatively limited number of
institutions and undertook to review “the quality
of and need for doctoral programs in selected
disciplinary areas.”
The State Education Department’s so-called
“Doctoral Project” in 1974 began examining
all state doctoral programs in chemistry and
history and continued in the following year
with astronomy, physics and English. The
examinations included departmental self-studies
and a site visit and report by two outside
consultants, The final decisions were made by
a statewide “doctoral council.” Albany fared
badly in the first two years: the history and
English Ph.D. programs received failing grades.
’
One faculty member observed that the site visit ts’
The Afro-American studies department was
created in 1969 by President Collins following
student calls for courses about the Aftican-
American experience. Nathan Wright was
among its earliest faculty members and
its first chair.
165
Philip Sirotkin, Vice President for Academic
Affairs, together with Benezet did much to
regularize administrative procedures after the
growth of the University in the 1960s.
166
‘
A
had been fair enough; he just hadn’t expected the final decision and”
now understood how students felt when they were “graded on tlie
curve.” It was a serious matter; the loss of doctoral programs threatened
Albany’s ability to fulfill its mission as a university center,
The University responded by pointing out that its Graduate Academic
Council in 1970 had begun reviewing its own programs; by 1976 the
GAC had assessed all doctoral and master’s programs using ninety-
eight separate teams of consultants. The University argued that the
responsibility for such reviews rested with the institution, not the SED,
SUNY decided to mount a legal challenge to the right of the SED to
make such decisions, thereby reopening an old issue between SUNY’s
Trustees and the Regents. SUNY lost in the Court of Appeals, and the
history and English programs were de-registered. Meanwhile the University
sought to defend its other programs. Internal reviews identified programs
unlikely to pass SED scrutiny, and the University itself suspended or
eliminated several programs. No other Albany programs were eliminated
by the SED.
Putting fresh resources into programs coming up for SED review
was difficult, given looming financial difficulties. The 1968 Master Plan
envisioned a university of perhaps 20,000 to 23,000 students at Albany,
and in 1969 faculty and staff were busy planning
for a 310,000 square-foot extension to the west
end of the academic podium. But 1970-71 brought
the first substantial budget cutback in SUNY
history, and by March of 1971 Benezet told the
academic community that long-term enrollment
would likely level off at 15,000 FTE students
and that Albany would have to build a first-
class university by means other than simply |
adding more students.
Financial resources became tighter each year.
Between 1970 and 1975, Albany’s cnrollment
grew by 15 percent, but the number of faculty
declined marginally. Albany’s state funding
between 1972 and 1974 grew more slowly than
fl
“The response of the state to
the rising rate of inflation, Rapidly
growing energy costs became a
matter of concern. As one faculty
member observed during these years,
inflation is compression.” The
worsening state fiscal condition in
1974-75 promised actual budget
reductions for at least a two-year
period. A crisis was at hand.
Benezet, preparing to step down
in June of 1975, responded by
appointing a “Select Committee on
Academic Priorities” to assess the status of the University and develop
options for the future. He told the Committee that the resource question
“requires us to make hard choices among those programs which are to
be advanced, those which are to be held to a minimum, and those
which may have to be discontinued at the doctoral level,” His charge to
the committee foreshadowed the wrenching changes of the next fifteen
months. The Select Committee worked very hard for three months and
reported in May that the University “simply cannot do everything at
once and do it well... No institution can possibly be all things to all
people . . . programs which are not central to its mission, which have
demonstrated an inability to operate effectively, or which have not met
the test of quality, must give way to those programs which can meet
those tests.” In a steadily worsening financial environment, Benezet in
June of 1975 invoked retrenchment and made his decisions. Emmett
Fields assumed the Presidency in July of 1975, fully briefed by his
predecessor and grateful that Benezet had implemented the Select
Committee’s recommendations. In the fall of that year, Fields charted
new directions for the University, urging a “public policy” emphasis in
which the University would ally itself with its community and state
government. He also made clear that program quality, imbalances in
workload, and Albany’s unique mission all justified the reallocation of
resources to priority departments. New budget cuts in 1976 led Fields
to appoint a new Task Force on Programs and Resources, Its immediate
Emmett Fields, second from right, assumed
the Presidency in 1975 and charted new direc-
tions for the University, including a “public
policy” emphasis in teaching and research.
Others pictured, from left, Louis Salkever,
Vice President for Research and Graduate
Studies; unidentified person; John Hartigan,
Assistant Vice President and later Vice
President for Finance and Business; and
John Hartley, Vice President for Finance
and Business.
167
Faculty in the 1970s pursued an active re-
search and scholarly agenda. John Mackiewicz
(above) of biological sciences in 1973 became
the first Albany faculty member promoted to
“Distinguished” rank by the State University
Board of Trustees. Kevin Burke (right) and
John Dewey (opposite) brought international
recognition to the Department of Geological
Sciences with their work in plate tectonics.
168
concern was to identify positions and dollars to be surrendered in the
forthcoming budget, but it was equally concerned with resource reallocation.
The Task Force completed its work in a month’s time and sent its
report to the President. On March 15, Fields announced his decisions,
terminating programs and closing departments. On April 16, Chancellor
Ernest Boyer accepted Fields’ recommendations.
In the fifteen-month period from January 1975 through March
1976, two blue-ribbon committees and two presidents had terminated
twenty-six degree programs and several academic units, including two
schools, three complete departments, and an experimental college;
eighty-eight faculty were retrenched, thirty-seven of whom had tenure.
There was no question but that budget problems required cuts, but
Albany more than any other unit of SUNY used retrenchment to
refocus the institution and reallocate shrinking resources.
The pain was substantial. Albany’s experiment in undergraduate
education, the Allen Collegiate Center, was shut down. The School of
Nursing and the Department of Speech Pathology and Audiology
x
disappeared; both had trained students for high-demand fields. Educational
offerings narrowed; there would be only minimal instruction in astronomy
and comparative literature with the abolition of those departments.
Concurrently in 1975 the Milne School was closed. A SUNY-wide
committee, formed at the behest of Chancellor Boyer, concluded that
campus schools were no longer essential to training teachers and
recommended closing all of them in the SUNY system, The Milne
School, a popular and successful institution which had trained thousands
of students, had fallen victim to change. For the first time in 130 years,
Albany was without a “model” school.
Many argued that retrenchment and reorganization had been far
from fair and equitable. Advocates for discontinued programs had no
success in reversing the decisions, Faculty who lost their positions were
thrown into a very difficult job market. To some, retrenchment seemed
to threaten the tenure system, providing an opportunity to replace
troublesome and highly paid tenured professors with more malleable,
lower paid individuals. Had that happened? Concerned faculty took the
matter to the Association of American University Professors (AAUP),
the professional organization that a half century earlier had developed
the tenure system to protect faculty members’ right to free speech. The
AAUP concluded that Albany made consistent provision for a year’s
notice to faculty being released. But the organization argued that the
financial cuts of 1974-76 could have been dealt with through attrition
and criticized the practice of employing retrenchment as a tool to
achieve institutional reorganization. The AAUP ended by censuring the
entire SUNY system.
But the gains were also substantial. Both committees had done their
work well; their recommendations were defensible if not palatable. The
Task Force had conducted Albany's first comprehensive review of all
academic, administrative, operational, and service components, developing
a tool that was to become very important in the next decade. Most
important, the process reallocated resources to create a stronger University.
In the four years from 1976-1980, the University attracted over 250
scholars, about seventy of whom were appointed at the senior level,
including seven new deans from other universities. The retrenched
individuals were soon gone, but the reallocated resources strengthened
Harry Crull was an innovative teacher of
astronomy, a department lost in the finan-
cial crises of the late 1970s.
The Institute for Humanistic Studies led
the resurgence of the College of Human-
ities and Fine Arts in the late 1970s.
Shown here are Dean John Shumaker;
Institute Director M. E. Grenander,
Distinguished Service Professor of Eng-
lish; and Deputy Director Hugh Maclean,
Distinguished Teaching Professor of
English.
170
retained programs. As one defender put it, the process
generated “more winners than losers.” The eight years
from 1968 to 1976 were turbulent, But the University,
pursuing its mission of becoming a public research
university, often converted problems into opportunities.
Student discontent with undergraduate instruction created
opportunities for educational experimentation, If some,
despaired at quixotic student political activism, others
rejoiced in student idealism. The University tenaciously
defended its doctoral programs with considerable success.
Above all else, Albany met the challenge of the financial
crisis of 1975-76, emerging bloodied but stronger.
Ted Fossieck served as principal of the Milne School from 1947 to 1973. The School’s closing
in 1977 meant that Albany was without a “model” school for the first time in 125 years.
a”
Professor Marguerite Warren
(above) of the School of
Criminal Justice, an Albany
graduate program of national
distinction. Political scientist
Bernard K. Johnpoll (above
left) was a flamboyant teacher,
prolific author, and institu-
tional gadfly.
171
i
i
V7
Women’s Studies
There are-now more than 700 women’s studies programs across the country, but the
University at Albany's stands out among them, Its seeds were planted early, and it now has
reached full status as a Department of Women's Studies, In less than twenty years, the
concept of women’s studies at Albany grew from a single course offering~“Women in
Modern Literature,” taught in 1971 by English Professor Joan Schulz (pictured)—to a minor
field (1973), then a studencinitiared interdisciplinary major (1978), followed by a faculty:
approved major (1981), and finally a state-approved major in 1989. Departmental status
became effective in 1990, The deparement continues to grow, with its researchers applying
feminist perspectives to nearly every academic field. In the 1993-94 academic year it was
maved to larger offices in the Social Science building.
In addition to opportunities on the undergraduate level, the department offers a graduate
certificate in Women and Public Policy, a master’s degree in Liberal Studies, a DA. in
Humanistic Stucies, and - .
concentrations on gender in other
graduate programs such as
sociology, English, and history.
In 1993-94, the Women’s
Studies roster features twenty
faculty members from various
departments around campus. The
department faculty has also helped
create the University's Institute —
for Research on. Women, a
search center that sponsors
conferences and hosts faculty.
workshops aimed at observing
the new studies on women which
are being conducted across
discipline boundaries,
In the 1970s, Albany was a stop for many
popular musical acts, including Miles Davis
(top left), Aretha Franklin (above), and Eric
Clapton (left), (Torch,)
Athletics continued to flourish in the
1970s. (Right) Co-captains of the 1977
Great Danes Frederick Brewington, '79,
and Ray Gay. Brewington is now a New
York City attorney and served as presi-
dent of the Alumni Association from
1991-1993,
(Above) Michael Lampert, '73, exempli-
fied the new directions of students in the
era of the University, He was president
of the Student Association for an unpre-
cedented two years from 1971 to 1973.
A graduate of Harvard Law School, he
became a prominent litigator in New
York and New Jersey. A loyal alumnus,
he served as president of the Alumni
Association from 1979 to 1981.
(Right) Cathy Ladman, ’75, a popular
stage and nightclub standup comedian,
has made frequent appearances on the
“Tonight Show” as well as having her
own HBO special.
174
(Left) A performance of
Marat Sade in 1972 was
directed by faculty mem-
ber Jarka Burian.
(Below) In 1972 the
University introduced
Community-University
Day to encourage more
interaction between the
campus and the city. Here
President Benezet and
chairman of the Univer-
sity Council J. Vanderbilt
Straub present a “Key to
the University” to Albany
Mayor Erastus Corning
III and Schenectady
Mayor Frank Duci. At
right is long-time Vice
President for University
Affairs Lewis P. Welch.
At left is Associate Vice
President Sorrell Chesin.
