University of California, Irvine. Office of the Chancellor

Historical Background

Jack. W. Peltason was the second chancellor of the University of California, Irvine, serving from 1984 to 1992. A distinguished political scientist and constitutional scholar, Peltason was also one of UC Irvine's founding faculty.

Peltason was born in St. Louis, Missouri, on August 29, 1923. He earned his bachelor's and master's degrees from the University of Missouri and his Ph.D. from Princeton University in 1947.

His first academic position was at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, where he taught from 1947 to 1951. In 1951 he joined the faculty of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he rose to the position of dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences in 1960.

It was during this time that Peltason co-authored his classic textbook Government by the People . Since its first publication in 1952, the book has been issued in numerous editions and is considered a fundamental text on American democracy for political science students.

As a member of UC Irvine's founding faculty, he was appointed dean of the College of Arts, Letters, and Science in 1963 when the campus was still in the planning phase. As dean, he had responsibility for approving academic plans for each division and recruiting faculty to a campus that had not yet been built. In 1964 he was named UC Irvine's second vice chancellor of academic affairs. In this position he played a leading role in guiding the creation of the university's original academic plan.

In 1967 Peltason returned to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign as chancellor, a position he held until 1977. He then became the chief spokesman for higher education as the president of the American Council on Education in Washington, D.C., from 1977 to 1984.

Peltason returned to UC Irvine in 1984 to become the campus's second chancellor. Early on he established the UCI Medal to recognize the contributions of university and community members to the campus; the Medal has since been awarded to numerous distinguished individuals and is the campus's highest honor.

During his eight-year term UC Irvine underwent unprecedented physical growth, increased funding for endowed chairs and distinguished professors, initiated community partnerships, and attracted major institutes, notably the UC Humanities Research Institute in 1987 and the National Academies of Sciences & Engineering in 1988.

In 1992 Peltason was appointed president of the University of California during a major budgetary crisis. He was able to stabilize the UC budget through an agreement with Governor Pete Wilson.

When he retired from the presidency in 1995, Peltason passed up deferred salary and pension funds and instead donated the $230,000 towards an endowment. As a result, the Jack and Suzanne Peltason Scholarship provides merit-based awards to help UC Irvine political science majors advance their educational careers. In 2007 an anonymous donor pledged more than $1 million to UC Irvine for the creation of the Jack W. Peltason Endowed Chair, which goes to a faculty member within the Center for the Study of Democracy.

Following his retirement, Peltason was active in many community and professional organizations, even after being diagnosed with Parkinson's disease in 2002. As of 2009 Peltason could still be found having lunch at the University Club on the UC Irvine campus with his wife, Suzanne. The couple has three children and many grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Biographical/Historical note

Historical Background

Daniel G. Aldrich was the founding chancellor of the University of California, Irvine, serving from 1962 until 1984. Aldrich's background in agriculture and his connection with the land-grant system at the University of Rhode Island influenced his decision to design a campus in which environmental planning and community service would be crucial. After accepting the appointment of chancellor he set out to create a university faithful to the land-grant tradition, yet appropriate to the opportunities and challenges of the 21st century.

Born in Northwood, New Hampshire, on July 12, 1918, Aldrich received his Bachelor of Science degree from the College of Agriculture at the University of Rhode Island in 1939. He earned his Master’s of Science degree at the University of Arizona in 1941 and married the former Jean Hamilton. He went on to get his Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin in 1943.

Aldrich began his academic career at the University of California in 1944 as a soil chemist at the Citrus Experiment Station, now the University of California, Riverside. In 1955 he was appointed chair of the Soils departments concurrently for the University of California, Davis and The University of California, Berkeley. In 1958 he became dean of Agriculture for the University of California, presiding over agricultural teaching programs at Davis, Berkeley, Riverside and Los Angeles, as well as the Statewide Agricultural Experiment Station. He was responsible for activities on four campuses, a network of field stations, and the Agricultural Extension Service, with farm advisors and home advisors serving 56 of California's 58 counties.

When appointed to the position of founding chancellor of UC Irvine, Aldrich was given the responsibility for developing the new campus from blueprints to fully operating academic institution within three years. He accomplished this, encouraging the newly recruited deans and department chairs to establish academic programs that reflected new developments in intellectual inquiry. Thus, the School of Biological Sciences pioneered in establishing departments based on levels of analysis, the School of Social Sciences developed programs emphasizing mathematical approaches to inquiry in the social and behavioral sciences, and the School of Humanities fostered programs in creative writing, literary criticism, and comparative literature. The young UC Irvine campus also provided a fertile setting for the development of newly-emerging interdisciplinary programs. The campus landscape was Aldrich's applied laboratory, a reflection of his interest and expertise in soils and plant nutrition.

Aldrich retired as UC Irvine chancellor in 1984. However, with the sudden death of the UC Riverside chancellor, he became acting chancellor of that institution from 1984-85. He was called again from 1986-87 to become acting chancellor of UC Santa Barbara, after which he retired, finally, and became Chancellor Emeritus of UC Irvine.

In recognition of Aldrich's key role in the planning and development of the buildings and programs of UC Irvine, the park in the center of campus was dedicated to him and named in his honor in 1984.

Aldrich was involved in numerous civic and professional activities, receiving honorary degrees and awards from a number of academic institutions as well as many honors in recognition of his professional activities and his contributions to service organizations. He served on advisory committees and boards of a large number of local, national, and international organizations and provided leadership to groups concerned with world-wide problems of agriculture and natural resources, including the President's Agricultural Task Force to Zaire (1985).

He was also an active participant in a variety of sports, ranging from coaching Little League teams in Riverside, Davis and Berkeley, to participating (and winning medals) in U.S. Master Track and Field Championships, Senior Olympics, and World Association of Veteran Athletes Championships.

When Daniel Aldrich died on April 9, 1990, he had been with the University of California for 47 years.

Biographical/Historical note