University of Arizona

A DYNAMIC EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTION IN A DYNAMIC STATE For more than seventy years, Tucson has been a “university” town. As a sleepy adobe pueblo, and now as a city experiencing dynamic growth, its life has been interwoven with the life of the University of Arizona. Located a scant two miles from the downtown business section, the University was considered “way out in the desert” by Tucson pioneers. Now, it is seven miles within the eastern boundary of the community.

Growing along with Tucson, the University campus has changed dramatically since World War II. In the past twelve years, twenty-one major buildings have been completed or are under construction and there have been major additions to seven existing buildings. A land acquisition program is presently underway that will increase the campus area by fifty per cent within the next five years.

The semi-tropical landscaping of the hundred-acre campus includes trees and plants from all parts of the world. These combine with the predominant red-brick architecture and the sweeping bright green lawns to make the University of Arizona campus one of the most beautiful to be found anywhere in the world.

During the current year more than 15,000 students are receiving instruction either on the campus at Tucson or through the University's state-wide extension program. Three-quarters of the 1957-58 regular enrollment of 10,ooo students attending day and evening classes on the Tucson campus is made up of students representing every community of Arizona. The remaining one-quarter are from each of the remaining states, the District of Columbia, several U. S. Territories and forty-three foreign countries.

Although Tucsonians have a strong local pride in the University that has grown with the Old Pueblo, the fact is that the University of Arizona is a state-wide institution and has been throughout its seventy year history.

The University did not actually open its doors until October, 1891, but a law providing for the establishment of a state university was enacted by the first territorial legislature when it convened in Prescott in 1864. The first Board of Regents was promptly elected by the legislature, but one of the three members was killed by Indians before the end of the year. The efforts of the pioneers to provide higher education for the people of Arizona were somewhat premature because in 1864 there was not a schoolhouse or public school, a courthouse or a railroad, in the entire territory, and there were only two or three private schools. The first public school opened in 1871 and public high schools still were unknown in the territory in 1891 when the university opened.

In that first year, only four of the university's initial student body of thirty-six students were at the college level while the remaining were in the preparatory department.

In 1891, the University's first physical plant consisted of one unfinished building-now known as "Old Main." There was also a well with a steam-driven pump and forty acres of land covered by mesquite and greasewood. The campus was surrounded by a barbed-wire fence. Old Main contained all the classrooms and laboratories, as well as living quarters for a part of the faculty and the library. Revered and beloved by alumni, Old Main still stands in the center of the campus, serving today as headquarters for the University's Air Force and Army ROTC units.

During the first twenty-five years the University slowly changed from a combined college and preparatory school to one with university aims and character exclusively. During this period it had encouraged and actively participated in the development of a secondary school system in Arizona, and in 1914 the preparatory department was abandoned.

In 1915 the University was organized into three colleges: Agriculture, Mines and Engineering, and Letters, Arts, and Sciences. The University now began a period of mature growth.

By 1920, the University had eighty-six faculty members and 1732 students-all of whom were fully admitted college students. The total number of buildings on campus was twenty. The population of the state had increased almost sixty per cent-from 204,000 in 1910, to 334,000 in 1920.

During the twenties the faculty and student body each doubled in size. Four new major buildings were constructed, and many new programs of research and instruction were launched as the University kept pace with the growth of the state's population to 435,000.

Even during the depression decade of the 1930's the University experienced a substantial growth in students and ten more major buildings were constructed-financed almost entirely by the sale of bonds and by grants from the Public Works Administration of the Federal Government.

Current estimates indicate that during the period 1956-1966 the University will need additional buildings, land and improvements costing more than $40,000,000 if the present high standard of university education in Arizona is to be maintained. This sum is almost equal to the present estimated replacement value of all campus buildings and grounds.

Only a part of the University's facilities are located in Tucson. In carrying out its programs of instruction, research and extension in agriculture the University operates ten farms spread throughout the state. They are located near the communities of Marana, Mesa, Phoenix, Safford, Yuma, and Tucson. Four of these have been added since World War II and there have been important construction and improvements at the others.

The most recent addition to the system of farms and facilities is the Cotton Research Station at Mesa with its laboratory, manager's residence and auxiliary buildings. The entire 265-acre tract of this station was purchased for the University at a cost of $170,000 by the Arizona Cotton Planting Seed Distributors, which supplied an additional $38,000 to add to $105,000 provided by the state for building construction.

An astounding fact is that the improvements in cotton farming resulting from the work of the Agricultural Experiment Station of the University have given Arizona cotton farmers an extra income that in any one year exceeds the total cost of the UA Experiment Station throughout the entire seventy-one years of the University's history. The Experiment Station's work has enabled Arizona to lead the nation with a yield of 1100 pounds of cotton per acre and to become one of the top five cotton states in total production.

The three main functions of the University of Arizona are instruction, research and extension. The last function-extension-applies to the widespread public service in areas other than resident instruction and research, and is a unique development of land grant colleges and iversities in the United States. From the beginning the University of Arizona has included the land grant programs made possible by the Morrill Act passed by Congress in 1862. General public service has been a prime objective together with the University's classical objectives of education and research. Through its state-wide extension program the University of Arizona reaches out from its campus in Tucson to benefit almost every person in the state.

Today the educational program of the University of Arizona is organized into ten colleges and three general departments including a total of four schools and forty-six departments, and there are thirteen research divisions and two extension divisions.

The bachelor's degree is offered in some 124 fields, the master's degree in fifty-one, and the doctor's degree in nineteen. Full pre-professional work is offered in the principal areas in which the state does not yet offer educational programs-fields such as medicine, dentistry, and veterinary medicine.

The research program of the University is carried on through thirteen research divisions with regularly budgeted funds; by members of the faculty voluntarily in their free time; and by graduate students working under the direction of members of the faculty. Funds have been

given in the form of special grants from individuals, corporations, foundations and federal agencies, and through special contracts have increased sixfold since 1952.

Just as the research program of the College of Agriculture has been directed toward practical statewide service, the Arizona Bureau of Mines has served the mineral industries of the state since 1891. Southern Arizona, with adjacent areas of New Mexico and Sonora, is the greatest copper-producing region of the world. Arizona has led the nation in the production of copper since 1911 and today leads the nation in the value of all metals produced.

In response to the rapid development in the state of general business and industry, the Bureau of Business Research was established in 1949. Included among its numerous projects are the publication and distribution of Arizona Business and Economic Review monthly to citizens in all parts of the state, and the annual Arizona State-wide Industrial Development Conference.

Industrial development related to electronics may well hold the key to the future of Arizona, and progress during the past three years at the University of Arizona in instruction and research in this field serves as an example of the prompt response of a state university to an emergency need of its state. Since 1953, undergraduate enrollment in electrical engineering has increased three times, the graduate enrollment has increased five times, and outside support for research has increased ten times.

Arizona has the largest American Indian population of any state in the nation, and the Bureau of Ethnic Research was established to gain a better understanding of the problems of this population and to find solutions for these problems.

The new Institute of Atmospheric Physics was established to conduct fundamental research into the weather and climate of Arizona, of the Southwest, and of arid regions in general. Particular emphasis is placed on the study of atmospheric processes associated with the formation of clouds and rain. By its investigations, the Institute hopes to serve the interests of all those who struggle with the water problems of the arid zones of the earth. In the spring of 1955, it was host to the first international con-ference on weather modification. The Institute today is world center for research in this field.

The University's research program in the utilization of solar energy is also centered in the Institute of Atmos-pheric Physics. The first efforts in this program are being directed toward solar radiation measurements and the practical heating and cooling of dwellings by using solar energy. In the fall of 1955, scientists from all over the world came to the University of Arizona campus to attend a conference on applied solar energy.

The new Cooperative Wildlife Research Unit, oper-ated jointly by the University, the Arizona Fish and Game Commission and the U. S. Wildlife Service, is rendering important service directed toward solving wildlife prob-lems of the state.

The Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research is also a world center for investigation in its field. University scientists have found that tree-rings give a picture of rainfall over the past two thousand years or so-information useful in the prediction of the rainfall of the future. Recently, a representative of this laboratory discovered "the oldest living things," pine trees more than 4,000 years old. This discovery received world-wide attention by the press.

One of the newest University research agencies, the Geochronology Laboratories, is an outgrowth of inter-departmental work performed by scientists in the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research and in other fields. Studies in the field of geochronology encompass archaeological and geological stratigraphy, Carbon 14 analysis, dendrochronology, paleoclimatology, paleontology, palynology, and geochemistry. The Geochronology Laboratories on Tumamoc Hill in the Tucson Mountains make it possible to center all this work in one location. Its establishment makes the University of Arizona unique among the world's educational institutions both in the scope of the research program and by providing facilities where scientists in related fields may more efficiently pool their efforts to expand man's knowledge of past epochs.

The University's Steward Observatory has a 36-inch reflecting telescope-one of the large telescopes of the world. Among its recent projects is one dealing with stars called “supernovae,” a study in cooperation with the Lick Observatory of the University of California and the Mt. Palomar Observatory of the California Institute of Technology.

The University's plant is constantly expanding.

In its educational extension program, the University offers evening classes in communities from Morenci on the east to Yuma on the west and from Nogales on the Mexican border to Prescott in Northern Arizona. Correspondence courses are taken by Arizonans in every community of the state.

An estimated total of 84,000 people heard some 700 lectures delivered by more than 100 members of the faculty during a recent year.

The University's Radio-TV Bureau made nearly 1000 broadcasts and sixty-two telecasts, with the radio programs being heard over thirteen of the sixteen radio stations in Arizona.

During the same year 1,700 University motion picture films were shown more than 9,000 times in seventy Arizona communities.

The University's Agricultural Extension Service, financed chiefly through Federal funds, has a total staff of seventy with central offices on the campus, a branch office in thirteen Arizona counties, and a field program in each of the state's fourteen counties. Statistics for a typical recent year reveal: 12,274 farm and home visits; 15,678 office calls; 16,871 telephone calls; 1,664 agricultural articles and news stories prepared for the papers of the state; 2,298 meetings of adults with a total attendance of about 110,000; 4,076 meetings of 4-H boys and girls with a total attendance of about 90,000.

During the same year the agricultural faculty took part in one hundred field days and short courses in various parts of the state, and 8,500 Arizonans received four issues of the publication, Progressive Agriculture in Arizona.

Not only do Arizonans benefit from these extension programs in their home communities, but thousands come to the campus each year for meetings and conventions, and to visit such famous places as the Arizona State Museum, the University Galleries, and the Steward Observa-tory, which is open to the public during the winter months.

The Arizona State Museum, which contains some of the finest collections of artifacts of the Southwest, including the million-dollar Gila Pueblo Collection, has made the University of Arizona a world center for the study of Southwestern archaeology.

The University Art Galleries, housed in the beautiful new Fine Arts Center devoted to music, art and drama, features a recently acquired collection of Renaissance masterpieces and other paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Foundation and the Gallagher Collection.

Southern Arizona's famed healthful and sunny climate strongly influences the nature of student life. Outdoor sports are year roundand more than forty per cent of the men and an almost equal number of coeds participate in the University's intramural program.

With a seven home game schedule, the Arizona Wildcat football team draws over 130,000 fans each fall to the stadium, and each spring the University's baseball squad plays a long schedule which has frequently taken it into the College World Series at Omaha. The basketball quintet annually ranks high in Border Conference play.

Track events are scheduled with Rocky Mountain and Pacific Coast schools, and in minor sports full advantage is taken of the Arizona sunshine for a long season of tennis, golf, and swimming. A unique student activity is the University's famed annual student rodeo, usually held in February. More than 150 student organizations serve the wide range of extra-curricular interests of the men and women enrolled at the University.

Today the University of Arizona counts more than 75,000 former students who live in every community of Arizona, in all territories and states of the United States, and in some 40 foreign countries.

Under the leadership of President Richard A. Harvill, rapid progress is being made in all areas of the University's program in the service of the state and nation. He predicts that, as compared with 15,000 persons receiving educational services during the current year, there will be 24,000 in 1965, and 36,000 in 1970, and that there will be expansion of research and extension programs.