William Trombley, a great journalist – 1929-2009

We met William Trombley when the University of California, local politicians, landowners and other real estate interests, were in the process wholesale corruption of local, state and federal environmental law and regulation and the laws and regulations of public process. Trombley was always fair, his questions were informed, he followed research leads to accurate conclusions, reflected below in three articles he did on the siting and budget approvals of UC Merced.
He was the acknowledged national dean of education journalists, a reporter who had covered the University of California from the time of Mario Savio and Clark Kerr to UC Merced.
Those of us who speak for the California public interest mourn his passing.
 
Badlands Journal editorial board
 
 
9-11-09
Los Angeles Times
William Trombley dies at 80; journalist reshaped The Times' coverage of higher education
He covered the tumultuous Free Speech Movement and the ordeals of the UC system. The veteran journalist and education analyst later founded an influential quarterly for a think tank...Elaine Woo
http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-william-trombley11-2009sep11,0,2478007,print.story
William Trombley, a veteran journalist and education analyst who wrote for Life magazine and The Times during a five-decade career, died Sunday at a Davis hospital. He was 80.
Trombley had respiratory and other problems and died after a heart attack in the hospital, said his wife, Audrey.
At The Times, where he was a reporter for nearly 30 years starting in 1964, Trombley was known for reshaping the paper's coverage of higher education, starting on the beat during a tumultuous period when the Free Speech Movement was roiling college campuses from California to New York.
He also covered crucial issues in lower education, from the desegregation lawsuits that brought busing to Los Angeles schools to prickly battles over bilingual education and textbooks.
"He had this incredible perspective that no one in the country could touch," said Patrick Callan, president of the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, a San Jose think tank where Trombley founded and edited an influential quarterly called National CrossTalk after leaving The Times in 1992. "He was thought of as the dean . . . the best higher education writer over that period of time in the country."
At National CrossTalk, Trombley wrote a series of in-depth articles on Kentucky's efforts to reform its higher education system. He also wrote memorably about the obstacles facing the UC system's newest campus at Merced, including its infringement on the habitat of several endangered varieties of fairy shrimp, "microscopic creatures that float on their backs, waving their 11 pairs of delicate legs" at frustrated UC officials.
Trombley was born in Buffalo, N.Y., on June 18, 1929. With a bachelor's degree in history from Johns Hopkins University and a master's in journalism from Columbia University, he launched an eight-year career at Life in 1953, working in the magazine's New York and Chicago offices before heading its San Francisco bureau.
After brief stints as bureau chief at Hugh Hefner's short-lived Show magazine and associate editor and contributing writer at the Saturday Evening Post, he joined The Times as an education writer and was immediately swept up in coverage of the student protests of the 1960s.
His stories documented the upheaval of the period, including the birth of the Free Speech Movement at UC Berkeley and the firing of UC President Clark Kerr.
He also profiled UCLA Chancellor Charles Young in 1970 when he faced pressure from Gov. Ronald Reagan and UC regents to fire Angela Davis, a philosophy professor and avowed communist who later went on trial for murder and was acquitted. "Bill attached himself to Young during the final days leading up to the regents meeting . . . and wrote a remarkable, intimate account of a university chancellor wrestling with a decision that could have cost him his job," recalled Noel Greenwood, who covered education for The Times before he became Trombley's editor.
Trombley was scholarly and, former colleague Robert Jones said, "a bit intimidating to people inside and outside the paper." Jane V. Wellman, a former UC budget analyst who now heads a Washington nonprofit, recalled that "people in the regents' office called him Trombley . . . as in, 'Watch out, Trombley's out there.' He covered those meetings with gleeful intensity, forgiving them nothing if their work offended his idea of what a public governing board should do, which was to oversee and protect the public interest."
He was also dry-witted, often leavening his stories with humorous observations. "Once upon a time a student could walk to any spot on campus in 10 minutes. Now he would need a personal monorail system," he wrote in a 1965 article for The Times about how unwieldy growth had turned UC's flagship campus at Berkeley into a "vast, perplexing, impersonal" institution and hotbed of student unrest.
He remained on the education beat for 11 years, switching to general assignment in 1975 and urban affairs in 1984. During his last three years at The Times, he reported from the Sacramento bureau. Whatever his official beat, he always returned to education stories and won a number of prizes, including the John Swett Award for Media Excellence from the California Teachers Assn. in 1983.
In addition to his wife of 55 years, Trombley is survived by daughters Patricia Trombley Ball of Montclair, N.J., and Suzanne Rice of Los Angeles, and two grandchildren.
 
10-96
The California Higher Education Policy Center
CrossTalk
"UCMerced"
Will there be a tenth UC campus?...William Trombley, Senior Editor
http://www.capolicycenter.org/ct_1096/ctn7_1096.html
THE UNIVERSITY OF California's plan to build a tenth campus near Merced seems to have been moved to the back burner.
The university's official position is that a "first phase" of the next campus will be ready by the year 2005, but privately top administrators say that date is unrealistic unless the state comes up with much more money for "UC Merced" than is anticipated.
There is also substantial internal opposition to the tenth campus--from chancellors of other UC campuses who fear that the San Joaquin Valley venture will eat into their budgets.
UC enrollment is expected to grow by about 32,000 students in the next decade, mostly at the undergraduate level.
Present plans call for the university to accommodate this growth by expanding six general campuses--Davis, Irvine, Riverside, Santa Barbara, Santa Cruz and San Diego. (UC Berkeley and UCLA are at capacity and San Francisco is primarily a health science campus).
"We've got plenty of capacity at existing campuses, at least until 2005," Lawrence C. Hershman, UC budget director, said in an interview, although he acknowledged that increasing campus size would create "community problems" in some cases.
Enrollment at UC Riverside is to be increased from 9,000 to about 30,000, although it is not clear how large numbers of new undergraduates are to be lured to what has been one of the university's least popular campuses.
Daniel Simmons, associate provost for educational relations, said a tenth campus would be needed sometime between 2005 and 2010, even if UC Riverside reaches the 30,000 target.
Simmons said little has happened at the 2,000-acre "UC Merced" location (which is in a remote area of pasture land) with regard to roads, sewers or other infrastructure, since the UC Board of Regents selected the site last May. The regents have taken an option on the land, which was donated by an educational trust, but have not made a final commitment to build.
However, a committee of faculty members and administrators is working on a preliminary academic plan for the new campus, hoping to present it to the university's statewide Academic Senate and the California Postsecondary Education Commission in about a year.
Hershman said $350 million in state funds would be needed to open a "first phase" campus for about 5,000 students in 2005 or thereabouts. "I agree that we have an obligation to serve the San Joaquin Valley," he said, "but someone's got to show me where we get the money."
Although budget cuts that marked the early 1990s have stopped and UC's state appropriations have risen last year and this, the university faces "several years of catch-up" on the other campuses before it can think seriously about Merced, the budget director said.
"The other campuses are leery about the tenth campus," said Simmons. "They see it as a real resource drain."
He also noted that Fresno-area legislators, who pressed UC hard to establish a campus in the San Joaquin Valley, have shown less enthusiasm for the idea since the Merced site was picked over two that were closer to Fresno.
While an opening date for the tenth campus remains uncertain, UC plans to expand its "outreach" activities in the Fresno area, according to Simmons. The UC Davis Extension Center program will be enlarged and there are plans for a "learning center," where students could take lower division course before transferring to a UC campus.
Meanwhile, Simmons, who has been the principal advocate among UC statewide administrators for the tenth campus, plans to leave by the end of the year and return to his old job as a law professor at UC Davis.
 
Winter 2001
National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education
National CrossTalk
The turbulent history of UC Merced:The University of California’s proposed tenth campus encounters thorny environmental problems…William Trombley and Carl Irving
http://www.highereducation.org/crosstalk/ct0101/ucmerced.shtml
MERCED, CALIFORNIA
Try not to mention the word "shrimp" when talking to University of California officials about their proposed new campus near this small agricultural city at the northern end of the San Joaquin Valley.
 
The 2000-acre campus site selected by the UC Board of Regents is filled with "vernal pools"-small pockets of water that form after the winter rains in most years and that contain, for a few weeks, a wide variety of aquatic plants and organisms.
 
Three of these creatures are forms of tiny fairy shrimp, the largest only about an inch long, that have been listed as endangered species by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. That means the university must go through a lengthy permitting process, involving Fish and Wildlife, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the Environmental Protection Agency and at least two state agencies, before any building can begin.
 
Consequently, it now seems likely that a new site must be chosen and that the campus will not open by the fall 2004 date that California Governor Gray Davis has promised. "I think that's clear," UC Merced Chancellor Carol Tomlinson-Keasey said in an interview. "The likelihood is that the permitting will take longer than 2002, which is what we had hoped for" in order to complete the first buildings by 2004.
 
"Something will open in 2004 but it won't be a 'campus' in the usual sense," said another UC official.
 
In all probability, the "something" will be a leased building at recently closed Castle Air Force Base, six miles north of Merced, which will house offices for administrators and the first group of faculty members. An uncertain number of students-perhaps several hundred-will be in "distributed learning centers" in Fresno, Bakersfield, Modesto and possibly in rented space in downtown Merced.
 
That will enable Governor Davis and local politicians to proclaim the "opening" of the UC Merced campus, and to cut a few ribbons, but it will be several years before an actual campus takes shape.
 
These are the latest developments in the turbulent history of what would be the tenth campus in the University of California system and the nation's first new major research university of the 21st century.
 
UC has long wanted a campus in the San Joaquin Valley, a fast-growing and increasingly influential part of the state, where there are several California State University campuses but only a limited UC presence.
 
Officials argue that a new campus is needed if the university is to meet anticipated enrollment demands, since most of the other UC campuses are full. An increase in California high school graduates is expected to bring an additional 63,000 students to the nine UC general campuses by 2010. Plans call for UC Merced to accommodate about 6,000 of that increase.
 
Local politicians and business leaders also hope the new campus will boost the local economy and help to eliminate persistent double-digit unemployment.
 
In 1990, the Board of Regents approved the tenth campus and began the search for a 2,000-acre valley location-1,000 acres for the campus and another 1,000 for "future development of revenue-generating activities."
 
Shortly thereafter, state budget cuts forced the university to retrench and the site selection process slowed to a crawl. By the mid-'90s, however, California's economic fortunes had brightened considerably, the UC budget had improved and tenth campus plans were moved from the back burner. After a heated competition, the Merced site was chosen over two that were closer to Fresno, which is by far the largest city in the valley. Political support for the project grew in volume.
 
"The governor is committed to UC Merced," said John Mockler, who until recently was Davis' interim education secretary. "There's a massive multiethnic need there."
 
Davis has shown this commitment by pouring millions into plans for the campus and for conservation efforts intended to mitigate the environmental problems. His 2001-2002 budget contains $162 million for UC Merced, most of it for construction of the first three permanent buildings, even though the location of the campus is still in doubt.
 
The present campus site, which is likely to be changed, is about six miles northeast of Merced, at the northern end of California’s San Joaquin Valley.           
Last year's state budget included almost $50 million to mitigate wetlands damage and to ease the path for UC construction.
 
By 2010, when UC Merced enrollment is expected to reach 6,000, at least $1 billion will have been spent on the campus-$400 million for construction, $300 million for infrastructure, and another $400 million for operations, according to estimates by the California Postsecondary Education Commission.
 
Lieutenant Governor Cruz Bustamente, who grew up in the valley, said the new campus would "fundamentally change the economy and cultural and political environment in the Central Valley." (The "Central Valley" extends 500 miles from Redding in the north to Bakersfield in the south and includes both the San Joaquin and Sacramento valleys.) A campus chancellor was chosen-Tomlinson-Keasey, who had worked on the project as a member of UC President Richard C. Atkinson's Oakland staff. The chancellor and a staff now numbering about 70 set up headquarters in a one-story Merced office building complex that also houses insurance agents and chiropractors. The UC Merced Foundation, with a board of trustees numbering 102, was formed. Local benefactors already have endowed seven faculty chairs.
Meanwhile, in those shallow vernal pools, referred to as "mud puddles" by some, tiny crustaceans that have existed for more than 200 million years-survivors of the Ice Age-were paddling upside down, wiggling their 11 pairs of swimming legs and feeding on algae, bacteria and other delicacies, blissfully unaware of the turmoil they were about to cause.
Most of the 10,000-acre planning area where the UC Merced campus might someday be located is now empty.
While environmental problems have pushed academic planning into the background for the time being, interviews with UC Merced administrators indicate that their goal is to become a traditional research university, like other UC general campuses. At first, most of the students will be undergraduates but the main focus will be on graduate study and research. "If you were just going to build an undergraduate program, you'd build another Cal State, you wouldn't build a UC," said former UC Berkeley Provost Roderic B. Park, who came out of retirement to help recruit deans and other top academic administrators for the new campus. "You've got to do the undergraduate part well, but it has to be within the context of a research university."
A few years ago, a group of faculty members from several UC campuses, hoping for a more innovative approach, drew up a quite different plan for the new campus, suggesting closer integration of graduate and undergraduate instruction. They proposed student learning centers, emphasizing individual initiative, group discussions and group learning, with small classes and seminars, according to Charles Muscatine, a retired professor of English and a veteran of largely unsuccessful efforts to improve undergraduate education at UC Berkeley.
"This was not an attempt to abandon research but to integrate research and teaching at the undergraduate level," said another member of the group, Alexander Astin, professor and director of a higher education research institute at UCLA.
These ideas went nowhere. To many, they sounded like the original plan for UC Santa Cruz, which opened in 1965 with a determination to make undergraduate education at least as important as graduate study but since has evolved into a research-oriented institution. "I can't tell you how many people have said, 'Don't give us another Santa Cruz!" said Karen Merritt, director of academic planning at UC Merced.
Chancellor Tomlinson-Keasey agreed. "That ideology was prevalent in the early days at (UC) Riverside and Santa Cruz," she said, but "the fact of the matter is, if you want to take your place alongside similar research universities, you have to stress graduate work and research."
The chancellor said the campus "will tilt in the direction" of computer science, environmental science and engineering at first, because of society's "pressing need for technical skills." Although "there are five jobs available for every person (UC) can turn out" in these fields, she said, the programs are overenrolled on UC campuses and "hundreds of qualified students are being turned away."
By stressing science and engineering, the campus also hopes to attract financial support from the federal government and from private enterprise. "We can't expect the state to pay for all of it, so we need to develop other revenue streams immediately," Tomlinson-Keasey said.
However, the chancellor said other academic areas will not be neglected. She hopes to build strong social science departments and expects that one of the university's first professional schools will deal with public policy.
After reviewing the latest academic proposals, however, Berkeley's Professor Muscatine said "plans for the faculty and curriculum in the division of social sciences, humanities and the arts seem both slim and somewhat incoherent. It looks like it will be a run of the mill 'research' campus, but oriented even more than usual toward vocational education, business, industry and big-money opportunities for both the university and faculty."
There are plans for a Sierra Nevada Research Institute, where scholars would study "issues of global significance-water, geology, ecology, air quality...but certainly with a definable local component," the chancellor said.
The hope is that the institute will provide a research base for new faculty members as the campus is being built and academic departments are forming. But progress has been slow. "It's not going quite as rapidly as we had hoped," said Fred N. Spiess, professor emeritus of oceanography at UC San Diego and chair of the university-wide faculty task force that has been overseeing academic developments at UC Merced.
One reason for the delay is that Tomlinson-Keasey and the task force could not agree on a director for the institute, and the chancellor has decided to postpone the appointment until other top academic jobs have been filed.
Some have wondered if first-rate faculty and administrators can be recruited for a new campus in a little-known, largely rural area of California, far from the golden coastline. But both Tomlinson-Keasey and Rod Park say this has not been a problem.
 
Clifford W. Graves, vice chancellor for physical planning at UC Merced, must find an environmentally suitable location for the new campus.          
The proximity of the Sierra Nevada Mountains and Yosemite National Park, 90 miles east of the proposed campus, has been helpful. "East of the Rockies, nobody knows where Merced is, but all of them know where Yosemite is," the chancellor said.
Park said he has been deluged with applications from candidates with "impressive backgrounds" for the top academic positions. During his search, Park said, he always got around to asking candidates if they had a "frontier spirit, (because) when I first saw the site, I thought of 'Dances with Wolves,' without the buffalo. There's no question many are exhilarated by the prospect."
In addition to the main campus, wherever that turns out to be, UC Merced plans to operate the "distributed learning centers" in Modesto, 30 miles north of Merced; in Fresno, 60 miles south; and in Bakersfield, another 100 miles farther south at the southern edge of the Central Valley.
Campus officials hope these centers will attract qualified lower-division (freshman and sophomore) students, especially Latinos and other minorities, who have shunned UC in the past, for financial and cultural reasons.
"This is probably the boldest part of our experiment," said Director of Academic Programs Joe Castro, who will run the regional centers. "We are looking for UC-eligible students in the valley who would love to go to a UC campus but cannot because of costs or because their families don't want them to go that far away."
 
In 1999, only 3 percent of Merced County high school graduates enrolled at a UC campus-one of the lowest percentages of any county in the state, according to the California Postsecondary Education Commission. In surrounding counties, the percentages were not much higher.
"The median family income here is around $30,000," Tomlinson-Keasey said. "You can't take that and subtract $13,000 (average cost of a year at a UC campus, including tuition, fees, books, room and board) and expect a family to send a student to UC."
The chancellor said an aggressive financial aid approach is planned, so that no academically eligible student will turn down UC for lack of money.
 
"This is also a cultural issue," said Castro, who is Mexican American. "We don't want our kids to go too far away." Castro cited his own case as an example.
After graduating from high school in the San Joaquin Valley community of Hanford, Castro had planned to enroll at nearby College of the Sequoias, a two-year community college. But then he was offered a chance to attend UC Berkeley as part of a special program for graduates of rural high schools.
"My grandmother didn't want me to go," he recalled. "She said, 'are you too good for the community college?' But I went. It was maybe one of two or three times in my life when I did something my grandmother didn't want me to."
There are tentative plans to enroll about 250 students at the three learning centers in fall 2004, although the number could be much larger if, as seems likely, there is no main campus by then. Many other questions remain. Will students take all of their lower-division work, or only some of it, at the centers? Will students who do well at the centers be guaranteed transfer slots on the main campus? Who will teach at the centers-regular UC Merced faculty members or part-time adjunct professors?
Professor Spiess said he doubted that fulltime UC Merced faculty would want to teach at the centers.
Joe Castro, director of academic programs, will supervise “distributed learning centers” in Bakersfield, Fresno and Modesto.
"These people are going to come to build a campus, not a bunch of places scattered around the countryside," he said. "If you tell prospective faculty they're going to have to go down to Fresno or Bakersfield to do some teaching, I don't think that would be attractive to the kind of people we are seeking."
 
Rod Park agreed but said, "That's not what we're asking them to do." He believes much of the instruction at the centers will be handled by part-time faculty members, probably from Cal State or community college campuses, supplemented by online classes and videoconferencing.
As Park sees it, every student enrolled at the centers would take a weekly seminar of about two hours at the main campus, with a UC Merced professor, and Merced faculty members would make occasional visits to the centers. "That would not be a big load on the faculty," he said.
Campus officials realize that not only must they attract more UC-eligible students through the learning centers and other means, but they also must increase the pool of eligible high school graduates.
California Postsecondary Education Commission figures show that, during the 1997-98 school year, only 27.4 percent of high school graduates in Merced County completed the courses required to enter UC. This compares with 38.2 percent in Alameda County (Oakland and surrounding area), 40.1 percent in Los Angeles and 56.5 percent in San Francisco.
Joe Castro and his staff, calling on faculty members from several UC campuses, are working with valley school districts to improve science and mathematics instruction and to increase the number of Advanced Placement classes offered in high schools.
 
But all of these efforts to plan a campus and a curriculum will be in vain if the thorny environmental problems cannot be solved.
These began in May 1995, when the UC Board of Regents selected the campus site, six miles from downtown Merced, on land that was donated by two local educational trusts. The agreement called for development of a community of at least 30,000, to be built on 8,000 acres adjacent to the campus.
Revenues from development of the community would flow to the trusts, eventually providing some $300 million in scholarships to UC and other higher education institutions for the region's high school graduates. Privately, UC officials now downplay these prospects.
 
One of three endangered species of fairy shrimp that are found in vernal pools on the proposed UC Merced campus site. Their presence is likely to delay the planned 2004 opening.       
Except for cattle grazing on the land between November and April, the proposed campus and the land around it are almost empty. Last fall, a visitor found a vast, silent brown landscape, where a red-tailed hawk taking flight provided the sole sign of life. There are no roads, sewers, water lines or other infrastructure, and county officials estimate that it would cost at least $350 million to provide them.
But this part of Merced County is wetlands country. When the winter rains end, the area is dotted with thousands of vernal pools, in which live the three endangered species of fairy shrimp. Five other species in and around the pools also have been listed as either "endangered" or "threatened," and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officials say there might well be more.
Chris Nogano, Sacramento branch chief for U.S. Fish and Wildlife, explained the importance of vernal pools in a Fresno Bee interview last fall: "These pools are used by migrating birds on the Pacific Flyway, and many other species use the pools. You find insects and native plants at vernal pools. In general, if you have degraded habitat for fairy shrimp, the quality of nature degrades for many species of animals and plants." The plight of fairy shrimp does not touch the hearts of many in the region. "All of us here today feel that children and education are more important than animals, fish, fowl and creepy things," State Senator Dick Monteith, a Modesto Republican, said at a pro-campus rally last summer.
These potential problems with wetlands and vernal pools were mentioned in an environmental impact report done for the Board of Regents during the site selection process but there is no indication in minutes of board meetings that the Regents discussed the subject before choosing the location.
 
"We were well aware that we had vernal pool and endangered species issues," said Roger Samuelsen, who was in charge of planning the new campus for several years, "but I don't think the extent of the problem was well understood. I don't think we realized that this would be in the middle of this vast area of vernal pools."
After the location was picked, UC officials commissioned additional environmental studies and began to realize the dimensions of the problems they faced. "The more we learn about the site, the more we can only say, 'wow, we didn't know,'" Samuelsen said.

 
"Unfortunately, they wound up on one of the really unique locations, not just in this state but probably in the United States and perhaps even in the world," said Elizabeth Borowiec, a project coordinator in the San Francisco regional office of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
"They put the campus in exactly the wrong place," said Brent Mishler, a professor of integrative biology and director of the Jepson Herbarium at UC Berkeley. "Nobody looked at the overall picture...The choice was made by the Regents and administrators, without consulting the faculty, even though we have the best biology faculty in the world." But he added, "The fault is partly ours-many of us didn't see the importance of this in time."
 
When UC opened three new campuses in the 1960s-Irvine, San Diego and Santa Cruz-environmental restrictions were a minor concern. Before a shovel of dirt can be turned on the Merced campus, however, UC needs approval from half a dozen federal and state agencies. Two especially important permits-one from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, required by the 1972 Clean Water Act, and one from U.S. Fish and Wildlife, required by the 1973 Endangered Species Act-generally take years to obtain. "It's not a pretty picture," said Clifford W. Graves, UC Merced's vice chancellor for physical planning. "It will take a lot longer than we would like...It's not just a question of what you can create; it's a question of what you can get permitted."
Under the present schedule, the campus would not even apply for a Clean Water Act permit until 2003, said Tom Coe, spokesman for the Army Corps of Engineers. First, Merced planners must complete a survey of 14 alternate sites that might be less environmentally damaging than the one the UC Regents have chosen.
UC officials were encouraged by a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling that limited the scope of the federal Clean Water Act and allowed some suburban Chicago communities to build a landfill on top of ponds used by migrating birds. It is not clear if this ruling will apply to vernal pools but if it does, UC Merced might not need a Corps of Engineers permit. However, UC attorney David Moser told the Modesto Bee that the decision is "not likely to speed up the process significantly."
Also, the Endangered Species Act still would apply, so a permit from the Fish and Wildlife Service still would be needed. That process usually takes four to five years, said Vicki Campbell, chief of the Conservation Planning Division, Endangered Species Program, in the agency's Sacramento office.
"The whole process is complex," she said. "Resource issues are never simple. We have to try to meet the needs of the species and we have to try to meet the needs of the county and the state" to build the campus.
 
"We would much prefer that they shift the site," Campbell added.
 
Local environmentalists are keeping a close watch on the UC Merced planning process. "We're not taking on UC, we're taking on the process," said Lydia Miller, president of the San Joaquin Raptor Rescue Center, which finds homes for wounded barn owls, red-tailed hawks, shrikes and other raptors. "We're trying to make sure they do this project right, and, if they don't do it right, we're laying the groundwork for a lawsuit."
This is not popular with some of Miller's Merced neighbors. "Some people will say things like, 'You're depriving your son (a high school student) of the chance for a college education,'" Miller said. "But you'd be surprised how many say things like, 'My god, we don't want this in Merced!'"
Miller and Steve Burke, president of Modesto-based "Protect our Water," have won important environmental lawsuits in the past, and UC planners do not take them lightly. "They have a tremendous track record," Roger Samuelsen said.
 
Both the university and Merced County, which is jointly planning the project with UC, expect to be sued. "So we've got to make sure we've got a defensible project," said county planner Bob Smith.
Many UC biologists oppose the present campus site. Some have protested publicly against the plan to build a campus for 25,000 students, and several thousand faculty and staff members, in such an environmentally sensitive area. Others are trying to work within the system, hoping to persuade the Board of Regents and the UC administration to move the site.
But there is strong political pressure to start building soon, on the theory that once permanent buildings are under construction, the project cannot be stopped.
Some of the pressure comes from Governor Davis, who has appointed a "red team," made up of state agency heads and UC officials, to speed the campus along. Democratic Congressman Gary Condit, a close Davis political ally, also is pushing hard, as are Dennis Cardoza, the area's Democratic state assemblyman, and Dick Monteith, its Republican state senator.
Nine months ago, Condit, Cardoza and Monteith met with representatives of the Army Corps of Engineers, U.S. Fish and Wildlife and other agencies and "let them know we think this (project) can be done," said Deede D'Adamo, Condit's legal counsel. "We've gotten the message through at the highest level that this is the highest priority."
 
On a trip through the Central Valley, former Vice President Al Gore said he would appoint a task force to help UC Merced move through the federal bureaucracies, but nothing much happened. The attitude of the new Bush Administration is not known.
Over the Christmas holidays, campus officials and local politicians thought they had found a way out of their environmental dilemma. They floated the idea of placing the first three permanent campus buildings on a 200-acre public golf course that is part of the trust lands. This location is one and a half miles from the original site but has few, if any, vernal pools.
"Because the golf course already has been developed, it would be easy to avoid any wetlands," campus spokesman James Grant told the Sacramento Bee. "So we are looking quite seriously at this alternative."
Environmentalists immediately cried foul.
"This is piecemealing the project, and that's against both federal and state law," said Lydia Miller. "They know that once they get a couple of buildings out there, it will be almost impossible to stop the whole project. They're just thumbing their noses at the federal agencies...This is shady and corrupt in the worst way."
 
Officials of both the Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service have expressed reservations about the golf course alternative.
"It depends what kind of buildings they want to put out there," said Vicki Campbell of Fish and Wildlife. "If it's something like a remote field station, that would probably be okay, but if these are basic campus buildings, like a library or an administration building, that would be piecemealing" and that would be illegal. (The three buildings UC has in mind are a library, an engineering/science building and a classroom/office building, not a "remote field station.")
 
Most of the parties in this complicated dispute agree that eventually a deal will be struck, and a UC campus will be built somewhere in the Merced area.
"I think we will see a campus in eastern Merced County," Campbell said. "I wouldn't hazard a guess on where or when."
 
 
 
Spring 2004
National CrossTalk
New Campus Still Faces Obstacles
After being postponed for a year, UC Merced hopes to open in fall 2005
By William Trombley, Senior Editor
http://www.highereducation.org/crosstalk/ct0101/ucmerced.shtml
Merced, California
Maria Pallavacini smiled with pleasure as she showed her visitor a newly arrived, $950,000 mass spectrometer that she and her research team at the University of California, Merced, will use in their work on cancer cells.
In addition to her duties as dean of the School of Natural Sciences, Pallavacini expects to continue the cancer research that she carried on at UC San Francisco for 12 years before coming to Merced. The new machine, purchased partly with state funds and partly with Pallavacini's federal research grants, will make that possible.
Because of California's financial crisis-the worst in state history-some critics have proposed that Merced, the tenth campus in the UC system, should be postponed or even cancelled. State support for the University of California's budget has been cut by about $520 million in the last four years and freshman enrollment has been capped for the first time at both UC and the 23-campus California State University system.
But the arrival of the mass spectrometer, and other expensive research equipment, is a strong sign that, for better or worse, UC Merced is likely to open in fall 2005. It would be the first major new U.S. research university of the 21st century.
The first buildings are rising on a former golf course two miles northeast of the city of Merced, 100 miles south of Sacramento, in the heavily agricultural San Joaquin Valley. Twenty-four faculty members have been hired so far. A staff of more than 200 is working at the temporary campus, housed in buildings that once were part of Castle Air Force Base. The state has invested more than $300 million in the campus to date-about $70 million in operating funds, the rest in construction contracts that are financed by general obligation bonds.
"We have passed the point of no return," said Peter Berck, professor of agricultural and resource economics at UC Berkeley and chairman of a university-wide faculty task force that has been overseeing the birth of the new campus.
But obstacles remain.
Because the UC Board of Regents chose to locate the campus in an area of environmentally sensitive vernal pools, several federal and state agencies must approve campus plans to expand from the present 200-acre golf course location to a 910-acre site that one day might accommodate as many as 25,000 students. A 1,240-acre "university community," with eventual housing for 30,000 people, is to be built on university land adjacent to the campus.
After the winter rains, vernal pools are alive with several varieties of fairy shrimp-microscopic creatures that float on their backs, waving their 11 pairs of delicate legs in the air to filter bacteria, algae and protozoa. The shrimp are an important part of the diet of migratory waterfowl and local animals. Several of these species are endangered, which means the university must obtain a "clean water" permit from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which has jurisdiction over U.S. wetlands, including these vernal pools.
It will take the Corps of Engineers, and the state and federal agencies that advise them, at least another year to decide whether or not to issue the permit, said Nancy Haley, chief of the Corps' San Joaquin regulatory office. "They're taking a risk" by building the first structures on the golf course land, Haley said, because the rest of the campus might have to be located elsewhere.
Without the permit, "we'd have to go back to the drawing board and develop a new campus plan," said Bob Smith, the Merced County planner who is working with the university on the project.
UC's strategy appears to be to start as many buildings as it can, and hire as many people as possible, as soon as possible, hoping the campus would be seen as too far along to be stopped. Lindsay Desrochers, vice chancellor for administration, said the university decided to go ahead without the key permit because "it was the only way to get this thing started."
Although UC Merced has strong support from local politicians and business leaders, there is less enthusiasm for the project in the state legislature, especially among Democrats.
During last year's budget discussions, Senate President Pro Tem John Burton called the proposed campus the "biggest boondoggle ever." State Senator Jack Scott, chairman of the Senate higher education budget subcommittee, has expressed doubts about proceeding with the campus in the face of a huge state budget deficit.
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger included $20 million in operating budget support for UC Merced ($10 million less than the campus requested) in his proposed 2004-05 budget. Although the legislature might nibble away at this request, most of it is likely to be approved, and the campus will at last open in fall 2005, with 1,000 students-600 first-time freshmen, 300 community college transfers and 100 graduate students.
The advance guard will be a group of about 25 graduate students who will arrive this fall, to pursue advanced degrees in environmental sciences, molecular science and engineering, and quantitative and systems biology.  
The first undergraduate students will find an academic program heavily slanted toward science and engineering. Sixteen of the first 24 faculty hires are in these fields. "We have invested early in science and engineering," said Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost David B. Ashley, former dean of the engineering school at Ohio State. "We think this is an important capability for this campus."
Campus officials had hoped to have 100 faculty on hand when the first students arrived, but budget cuts, last year and this, have reduced that number to 60. "We think we can make that work," Ashley said. However, Chancellor Carol Tomlinson-Keasey warned, "I will not open with less than 60."
At first, there will be six undergraduate majors and six areas of concentration for graduate students-again, mostly in science and engineering.
Some faculty prospects were bothered by "all this uncertainty about the budget," Ashley said. "It's taken a lot of hard work, but in the end we've made some outstanding hires." He noted that the new faculty members are bringing along more than $7.6 million in research grants.
Jeff Wright, dean of the School of Engineering, said "some of the more junior people were a bit gun shy," about accepting job offers, especially after the campus opening was postponed from this year to next, "but the more senior people know that things like budget crises come and go."
"Most of the people we're interested in haven't asked questions about the budget," said Kenji Hakuta, dean of the School of Social Sciences, Humanities and Arts. "They're committed to the adventure of starting a new campus." But he added, "Until we have students here, we're on pins and needles…Once the students are here, we'll all feel better."
Dean Pallavacini of the School of Natural Sciences hopes to build cooperative programs among the sciences and also with the School of Engineering. "Everyone understands you can't work alone anymore," she said, but it is hard to get rid of "academic silos" on an established campus. "There aren't many places where scientists, humanists and engineers work together-we hope this will be one."
In biology, "mapping the genome has changed instruction in fundamental ways," the dean said. "We have to find ways to train students to be at the cutting edge of this new biology."
There will be undergraduate majors in Earth Systems Biology and Human Biology, and the first graduate program will be in Quantitative and Systems Biology. Pallavacini also hopes students will work on local problems, like the high incidence of asthma in the San Joaquin Valley, especially among Hispanics.
She talks to local groups about current issues in science and encourages her new faculty members to do the same. "Our community has got to know what we're about," Pallavacini said. "We can't be isolated, we can't be seen as an Ivory Tower."
Dean Wright of the engineering school also hopes to involve students in "hands-on problem solving."
"One of the problems in engineering education is a low retention rate," said Wright, who was associate dean of engineering at Purdue University before coming to UC Merced. "Even the good schools retain only about half of the students who start out to be engineers." Wright believes this is because the first two years are filled with classes like calculus and physics, and students "don't see the connections" between this classroom work and the real world.
With a program he calls "service learning," the dean hopes students "right from the start will be getting their hands dirty," working on practical engineering problems, along with the required course work. For example, students might build information systems for United Way agencies that cannot afford to hire engineers.
"I want them to understand that engineering is a lot more than solving equations," Wright said.
Dean Hakuta of the School of Social Sciences, Humanities and Arts "breathed a sigh of relief" when the campus opening was delayed a year.
Newly arrived from Stanford University, where he spent 14 years as an experimental psychologist and professor of education, Hakuta faced the task of hiring faculty and establishing academic programs in a few short months. "I don't know how I could have opened (this year) without compromising quality and making some really bad decisions," he said.
Then came the news that the campus debut would be postponed for a year. Now Hakuta has time to plan for two broad undergraduate majors-World Cultures and Social and Behavioral Sciences-and graduate work in history and perhaps one other field. He also hopes to start a World Cultures Institute and an undergraduate major in business management.
Historian Gregg Herken, who has written books about nuclear history and the Cold War, decided to accept an offer from UC Merced because "it's something new and exciting and different." For the last 15 years Herken was Senior Historian and Curator of Military Space at the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum, in Washington, D.C.
A 1969 graduate of UC Santa Cruz, Herken hopes the interdisciplinary spirit which characterized that campus in its early years can be repeated at Merced, though he suspects "that kind of cooperation will break down as we grow larger," just as it has at Santa Cruz.
Provost Ashley said a fourth academic unit-a school of management-will be added soon, because of strong student interest in that field.
The Sierra Nevada Research Institute, based on the campus, will "work on the environmental problems of this region," said Director Samuel J. Traina, who came to UC Merced from Ohio State. These include water problems, climate change and the pressures exerted on San Joaquin Valley agriculture by increasing urbanization.
Traina said the institute expects to operate a field station in Yosemite National Park, 80 miles away, in conjunction with the National Park Service.
But all of these academic plans and aspirations are at the mercy of budget discussions now underway in Sacramento.
Despite recent passage of a $15 billion bond issue, California still faces a budget deficit of at least $14 billion, which Governor Schwarzenegger hopes to reduce or eliminate without raising taxes. That means big cuts in many state programs, including higher education.
The 2004-05 Schwarzenegger budget proposes cuts of nine percent for the California State University system, 7.9 percent for the University of California, and a slight increase for the state's 109 community colleges. Tuition would be increased substantially in all three segments. Student financial aid would be reduced and funding would be eliminated for "outreach" programs, which seek to recruit low-income and minority students and prepare them for admission to UC or Cal State.  
Schwarzenegger also wants freshman enrollment at both UC and Cal State to be reduced by ten percent, with 7,000 students diverted to community colleges instead.
In the face of such stringent measures, does it make sense to open UC Merced? Some think not.
"Many Democrats are asking, 'Why are we doing this when we can't support the existing campuses adequately?'" said a legislative staff member who is close to the budget talks but did not want to be identified.
"The state doesn't need new research facilities, it needs more seats for undergraduates," said a California State University official, who also asked for anonymity.
Some have suggested that the Merced campus opening should be postponed for at least another year, and a few have proposed that it be abandoned altogether. Naturally, University of California administrators disagree.
"We've put so much money into it, it makes no sense not to go ahead and open," said Lawrence C. Hershman, UC vice president for budget. "We've spent hundreds of millions of dollars on buildings and faculty and equipment, and it just makes no sense to stop the project or mothball it."
Hershman said UC expects 66,000 additional students (in addition to the 208,000 now enrolled) by the year 2010 and that plans call for UC Merced to take 5,000 of those. "It would be stupid for the state to mothball this campus…and then put up buildings on other campuses to accommodate the enrollment increase," he said.
"Promises were made to these people (in the San Joaquin Valley), going back to the '60s, that there would be a UC campus, and it never happened," Hershman added. "Now we're finally delivering on the promise…It's the right thing to do."
 Chancellor Tomlinson-Keasey argues that the San Joaquin Valley is "terribly underserved" by public higher education. In the 11-county area around Merced, only a "pathetically low" 14.2 percent of the population has college degrees, she said. Only 4.6 percent hold graduate or professional degrees. More than 30 percent of San Joaquin Valley adults do not have a high school diploma.
"One of the reasons the campus came here was to try to make a difference with low-income, especially Hispanic, students," said Director of Admissions Encarnacion Ruiz.
In fall 2002, the last year for which figures are available, only 1,414 out of almost 41,000 high school graduates in the 11 counties enrolled at a UC campus, according to the California Postsecondary Education Commission. About half of those who qualify for admission to UC do not apply, Ruiz said. Of those who are admitted, half do not enroll.
"This really is a cultural thing," Tomlinson-Keasey said. "For some, cost is a barrier, but for many families, they just don't want their children to go away to college," even if the campus is not very far away.
Benjamin T. Duran, president of Merced College, the local two-year community college, agreed. "If you're a non-English-speaking parent, and your son or daughter comes to you and says, 'Dad, I've been accepted at Berkeley,' you're probably going to say, 'no, I don't think so,'" Duran said.
Duran grew up in Merced, one of eight children of farm worker parents and the first in his family to attend college. In the 1980s he was superintendent of a high school district where most of the students were Hispanic.
"I was frustrated," he said. "I had some really talented students who didn't even apply" to the University of California. A few went to nearby Fresno State or Stanislaus State and did well, but many did not go to college at all. Duran believes the presence of a research campus like UC Merced will lift the aspirations of many such students.
Chancellor Tomlinson-Keasey hopes that one-third to one-half of UC Merced undergraduates will come from the San Joaquin Valley, but some doubt that goal can be met. They point out that many small high schools in the area do not offer the kind of instruction, especially in mathematics and science, that would prepare students for the university.
UC Merced has mounted a large-scale "outreach" effort, sending teams to area high schools to make sure students take the courses needed to be eligible for UC. They also help students and their families with financial aid forms, loan applications and other paperwork.
They have even organized visits to other UC campuses, to show parents the campus medical facilities and police station, in an effort to reassure them that their sons and daughters would be safe. They call these groups "Unwilling Parents of Willing Students."
These efforts have met with some success, even before UC Merced opens. The number of students admitted to UC campuses from 18 targeted high schools has increased from 293 in fall 2000 to 415 last fall, said Jorge Aguilar, director of the Center for Educational Partnerships at UC Merced.
"If it hadn't been for them (the UC Merced recruiters), I probably wouldn't have taken the right classes and probably wouldn't have gotten in," said Alicia Quintero, from the small town of Caruthers, south of Fresno. Alicia is now a sophomore at UC Riverside, with a 3.4 grade point average, and is thinking about a teaching career.
But the UC Merced program lost $1.2 million as a result of last year's budget crisis, and the 2004-05 Schwarzenegger budget proposes to eliminate all outreach efforts in both the UC and Cal State systems.
"That was not a rational decision," said Allen Carden, executive director of the Central Valley Higher Education Consortium, which includes 24 two- and four-year schools in the area.
Supporters of the new campus argue that it will provide an economic lift to one of the poorest areas in the state and will help to diversify an economy that has been heavily dependent on agriculture alone.
"There will be economic spin-offs from the research that is done at UC Merced," said Carol Whiteside, president of the Great Valley Center, a public policy support group. "And this will be an indication of the region's emergence as a comprehensive economy, not one just devoted to 'the farm.'"
Whiteside also said the campus "will provide a visible connection between kids in this area and a research education and atmosphere, something that's simply not available now."
These, then, are the arguments the University of California is making as budget talks continue in the state capital: The Merced campus would help to relieve UC's enrollment crunch, it would provide more opportunity for San Joaquin Valley students, and it would boost the area economy.
The main counter-arguments are that the state, which already has nine research-oriented UC campuses, cannot afford another at this time of financial emergency, and the money would be better spent providing additional space for undergraduates at the less costly California State University and the community colleges.
Sacramento budget watchers say the outcome will not be determined until negotiations conclude, probably in late spring or early summer. In the meantime, UC Merced officials continue to plan and hope, aware that they are only small players in the Great Budget Game.
"There are a lot of people with an interest in the outcome," Vice Chancellor Lindsay Desrochers said. "We're just a chit in the game."