| 
 Our
September issue is one of milestones. Sixth College graduated its
first class in June, as did the Skaggs School of Pharmacy, and
the Academic Internship Program celebrates 30 years of placing
students in the workforce. The University is growing up and growing
out. We now have 22,057 undergraduates enrolled for
fall, a far cry from the 181 brave souls of UCSD’s pioneer
class, who ventured onto the building site that was campus, 42
years ago.
I graduated from one of the “red-brick” universities
in the U.K. and our pioneer class entered in 1845. Not much chance
of any of them still being around, unlike the UCSD pioneers. I
have often thought what a privilege it must be for you to see your
university grow in such leaps and bounds. To see it start off as
a gleam in Roger Revelle’s eye, and end up as one of the
world’s top research universities. It really is a story of
mythic proportions, of dreams maturing into a successful reality.
And all of you were part of it.
It must be a privilege, but also I am sure a bit discombobulating.
As one alumna said to me, “every time I come back, I barely
avoid walking into the wall of some gigantic building where once
there was a tree.” We still have trees, but the buildings
are proliferating at a seemingly exponential rate. This spring,
the 45-million dollar Skaggs School of Pharmacy was completed,
with classrooms and three floors of research laboratories. At the
northern end of campus, the sharply angled prow-like, glass and
steel walls of The Rady School of Management are fast rising on
a hill above the Pacific. In the center of campus, the five-story
Student Academic Services Facility now looms over the granite marker
commemorating the transmutation of Camp Matthews into UCSD, in
October 1964. Scheduled to open next April, the 102,000 square-foot
building will include Financial Aid, the Registrar, Admissions,
a 300-seat multipurpose room and two restaurants. And in 2008,
the Alumni Association will move out of one of the last of the
old Camp Matthews officer’s quarters to new digs in an expanded
Price Center. (And what is the Price Center ask all of you who
graduated before the mid-1990s!) All in all, there are some 16
capital projects in various stages of planning and construction.
So a word to all returning alumni, don’t blink, that shortcut
through the trees may have been replaced by one of those neophyte
walls. However there are constants: Crisp brown eucalyptus leaves still
crackle underfoot, and swirl like ticker tape in cool marine breezes;
sand splattered surf boards still lean against balcony walls; and
students still linger over coffee, deep in meaningful conversations
that that will shape a lifetime. Our writer of Looking Back, Annamarie Bezzerides, ’91, recalls serving those coffees
at the Grove Caffe almost 20 years ago. She describes it as “That
little wooden hut with a funky, hip feel, where traditions like
wearing strange hats flourished in protest against the health code.” And
recalls “having long drawn out philosophical conversations
about saving the world.” Let me assure you that even amid
this deluge of Podcasts and text messages those conversations continue.
As they say, the more things change, the more they stay the same. Raymond Hardie, Editor
alumnieditor@ucsd.edu
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